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BURKE'S SPEECH 



ON 



AMERICAN TAXATION 




A 



Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

by 
JAMES HUGH MOFFATT 

Assistant Professor of English Literature, Central 
High School, Philadelphia 




GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 




r^^ o> 



ELaas" 

.5 



Copyright, 1905, by 
JAMES HUGH MOFFATT 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



55-6 












GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • HUSTON • U.S.A. 



PREFACE 

William Hazlitt said : " There is no single speech of Mr. 
Burke which can convey a satisfactory idea of his powers of 
mind : to do him justice, it would be necessary to quote all his 
works; the only specimen of Burke is, all that he wrote.' 1 If 
a specimen must be selected, it is wise to select his two 
speeches on American affairs, both of which should be read by 
every student of literature and of history. This edition of 
American Taxation has been prepared to meet the actual 
demands of the class room. Too often the student is content 
with reading Conciliation with America. Experience in class 
rooms for four years with six hundred students has shown that, 
notwithstanding the excellence of Conciliation with America, 
it gives students a one-sided impression of Burke as an orator 
and a debater, which can be corrected by a study of American 
Taxation. His speeches were not always so calm, dignified, 
and temperate as Conciliation with America. The energy and 
wit of American Taxation are more typical of him. Like most 
of his speeches it was not prepared in advance, but spoken 
extemporaneously ; what it loses in coordination of construction 
it gains in intensity of argument. It came white hot from the 
furnace of his convictions. It reveals his skill in detecting 
the weaknesses of his opponents, which long experience in 
the minority had taught him. It illustrates the historical 
method of debate which Burke applied to every question, and 
which appears to a less noticeable degree in Conciliation with 
America. In the latter Burke argued as if he were hoping 
against hope ; but American Taxation was delivered almost a 



vi PREFACE 

year earlier, before he had lost hope in England's treating her 
colonies justly. It is full of the spirit and the conviction of a 
man who is hastening to warn his country of impending danger. 

In the Introduction to this edition Burke's speeches and 
writings are not discussed in chronological order, but collected 
into groups according to their subjects. This method enables 
the student to realize exactly what Burke accomplished for the 
causes which he championed. An effort is also made not 
merely to tell the names of his speeches, but to sum up in a 
sentence their main arguments. The Notes are rather full, giv- 
ing all the information a student needs for a complete under- 
standing of the speech. Theoretically it is better for a student 
to hunt up the information, but in practice nine-tenths of the 
students have neither time nor opportunity for this work. 
The text is that of Dodsley's second edition, 1775, except 
that the spelling has been made to conform to that of the 
other books of this series. 

The editor wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the help 
he has received from E. J. Payne's edition of Burke's Select 
Works, F. G. Selby's edition of Burke's American Speeches, 
and from Professor C. A. Goodrich's British Eloquence; their 
notes are frequently quoted. He also gratefully acknowledges 
his indebtedness to Professor Cheesman A. Herrick and Pro- 
fessor Albert H. Smyth for practical advice, and to Dr. John 
L. Haney and David Wallerstein, Esq., for valuable criticisms 
of the Introduction and Notes. He hopes that this little book 
will help some students to appreciate the work and to honor 
the memory of Edmund Burke, the "Interpreter of English 
Liberty." 



J. H. M. 



Central High School, Philadelphia 
January 23, 1905 



CONTENTS 

Introduction Page 

The Life of Edmund Burke ix 

For Ireland xv 

For America xviii 

For his Party and his Country xxii 

For India xxvi 

Against the French Revolution xxx 

Suggestions for Study xxxiv 

Bibliography xxxvi 

Speech on American Taxation i 

Notes 69 



INTRODUCTION 



THE LIFE OF EDMUND BURKE 

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin on January 12, 1729. 
His father was a lawyer with a large practice, so that he could 
afford to send Edmund to the good boarding school of Abra- 
ham Shackleton, a Quaker. There he formed a lasting friend- 
ship with the schoolmaster's son Richard, who was his chief 
correspondent for many years. In 1743 he was enrolled as a 
student in Trinity College, Dublin, from which he received the 
degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1748. In addition to the work 
for the degree, he read a great deal in natural philosophy, 
logic, history, and poetry. He was in the habit of spending 
three hours each day in a public library reading miscellaneous 
books. Later in life, in a letter to his son, who was studying 
in France, Burke said : " Reading and much reading is good. 
But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your 
own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is 
far better." l 

Early in his college course Burke had purposed to follow his 
father's wish that he should become a lawyer, and the two 
years after graduation were probably spent studying in his 
father's office. But in 1750 he went to London to complete 
his legal education at the Middle Temple. 

Burke soon became convinced that the study of law was too 
narrowing and uninteresting for his life work, although in later 
years he said that law was "one of the first and noblest of 

1 Burke's Correspondence., London, 1844, I, 426, 
ix 



X INTRODUCTION 

human sciences ; a science which does more to quicken and 
invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learn- 
ing put together ; but it is not apt, except in persons very 
happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the 
same proportion." 1 He neglected law for politics, for the 
theater, and for literature. The consequence was that, early 
in 1755, his disappointed father stopped his allowance of 
^100 a year, and Burke was forced to turn to literature, not 
for pleasure as formerly, but for a livelihood. 

Although Burke had probably been writing for newspapers 
and magazines before 1756, his first little book or pamphlet, 
called A Vindication of Natural Society, appeared anony- 
mously in that year and was not acknowledged by him for a 
few months. Two years before, the works of Lord Boling- 
broke, in which he had attempted to defend natural religion, 
had been posthumously published. Burke was fascinated by 
the clearness of the style, but saw the unsoundness of the 
reasoning. Bolingbroke had argued for natural against revealed 
religion, declaring that every man should work out his own 
individual system of religion. Burke pretended to agree with 
Bolingbroke, but in reality he showed the weakness of the 
method of reasoning, by proving that if it could be applied 
to religion, it could be applied also to society and every other 
institution of civilized men. So cleverly did Burke imitate 
Bolingbroke's style and argument that his work was received 
even by Bolingbroke's friends as an additional posthumous pub- 
lication of Bolingbroke. This was a remarkable achievement, 
for Bolingbroke was considered a master of English prose. 

A few months later Burke published A Philosophical Inquiry 

into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which 

he had been preparing for seven years. This speculative work 

was one of the first essays in aesthetics in the English language, 

1 See page $2. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

and is overlooked to-day only because of the great progress 
which has recently been made in this branch of knowledge. 
It was highly valued by his contemporaries and passed through 
several editions, but its most important influence was in Ger- 
many, where the German scholar, Lessing, started to translate 
it, but finally decided to compose a work of his own on the 
same subject. This work was Laokoon, the famous treatise on 
the principles of art. 

Too much study and writing undermined Burke's health, 
and he was forced to go to Bath to recuperate. He became 
worse, and to aid his recovery, his physician, Dr. Christopher 
Nugent, took him into his own home. Here Burke gained not 
only health but happiness, for in 1757 he married Jane Nugent, 
the doctor's daughter. On his return to London his attention 
was confined to preparing for publication An Abridgment of 
English History down to the reign of King John. The most 
valuable part of this was the discussion of the Druids. 

England was chiefly interested at this time in the French and 
Indian War and the coincident Seven Years' War. To satisfy 
the growing curiosity of Englishmen concerning the American 
colonies, Burke published An Account of the European Settle- 
ments in America. In 1759 the leading London publisher, 
Dodsley, began to issue the Annual Register, edited by Burke. 
It contained a complete history of the continental war, a 
chronicle of English politics, brief biographies of leading states- 
men, accounts of extraordinary occurrences, miscellaneous 
essays, a few poems, and reviews of the leading books of the 
year. For many years Burke continued to edit the Annual 
Register, receiving for it ^100 a year. 

These works led to his introduction to Samuel Johnson, 
Oliver Goldsmith, (Sir) Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, and 
others, who in 1764 formed the famous Literary Club. Burke 
was one of the few men whom Dr. Johnson respected as equals. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Boswell records that Dr. Johnson said : " Burke is the only 
man whose common conversation corresponds with the general 
fame which he has in the world. Take up whatever topic you 
please, he is ready to meet you." x 

In 1759 Burke became connected as a sort of private secre- 
tary with William Gerard Hamilton, known as "Single-Speech" 
Hamilton, because his first speech in Parliament was so excel- 
lent that he never ventured to make another. In 1763, after 
Burke had spent several years with him in Ireland, where 
Hamilton was secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Hamilton 
secured for him a pension of ^300 and seemed to think that 
this gave him the control of all Burke's time and services. 
But Burke refused to give up his entire time and liberty, and 
resigned the pension. 

Such was Burke's training for the public life he was about 
to enter. In the summer of 1765 George III became dissatis- 
fied with the temporizing policy of the leading minister, George 
Grenville, and dismissed him, as he had formerly dismissed 
Pitt for his independence. The King was forced to ask the 
leading Whig, the Marquis of Rockingham, to form a ministry. 
Burke became Rockingham's private secretary through the 
influence of his cousin, William Burke, despite the protests of 
certain politicians who declared that he was merely an Irish 
adventurer and an agent of the pope. Burke's mother and 
his wife were Roman Catholics, but Burke himself had been 
educated in the Protestant faith of his father. 

In January, 1766, he entered the House of Commons as 
member for Wendover, and soon afterwards voted for the repeal 
of the Stamp Act, and for the Declaratory Act. But in one 
year and twenty days the Rockingham ministry was dismissed 

1 Boswell's Life of Johnson^ edited by G. Birkbeck Hill, Oxford, 
1887, IV, 19. 



INTRODUCTION xin 

and Pitt was recalled. After a short vacation in Ireland, 
Burke purchased an estate of six hundred acres near Beacons- 
field, twenty-four miles from London. He paid ^"20,000 for 
it, and as his only income was his salary and small sums for 
literary work, he borrowed some money probably from Lord 
Rockingham and (Sir) Joshua Reynolds. To this home he 
retired for recreation from the turmoil of London life, finding 
much pleasure in cultivating his farm. 

In 1774 Burke was elected a member of Parliament for the 
important commercial city of Bristol ; he continued to repre- 
sent Bristol until 1780, when he withdrew from the hopeless 
contest for reelection. He had become unpopular because he 
had refused to obey the demands of his constituents concern- 
ing legislation for Ireland. He plainly told them, as he had 
in 1774, that it was the duty of each member of Parliament 
to consider not only the interest of the locality he represented, 
but always the interest of the entire empire. 1 Burke did not, 
however, retire from Parliament, as he was elected for Malton. 

From 1770 to 1780 Burke's chief interest was to oppose the 
policy of the government in the treatment of the American 
colonies and in the expulsion of John Wilkes from the House 
of Commons for libel. The rest of his life Burke devoted to 
prosecuting Warren Hastings, to opposing the influence of the 
French Revolution, and to aiding the Irish Catholics. He 
found time to write letters on practical farming to his friend 
Arthur Young, and from the many demands on his purse he 
aided some unfortunate acquaintances. He sent James Barry, 
a young Irishman, to the continent to study painting, and for 
many years watched over the artist's fortunes, writing letters 
of advice and art criticism, that showed the same spirit and 
taste as the Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. Another 

1 See Speech at the Conclusioyi of the Poll, Burke's Works, Boston, 
1899, II, 81. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

man whom he befriended was the poet George Crabbe. Burke 
received him into his home and obtained a publisher for his 
poems. Later through his political influence Burke secured 
for him an appointment as chaplain. 

Unfortunately Burke lost many friends as he grew older ; 
like his father he became irritable in his old age, as is shown 
in many of his brief angry speeches in Parliament. Most of 
the friends of his youth had passed away, and his political 
companions gradually withdrew from his support, because they 
were not so unselfishly and zealously interested in the measures 
which he advocated. 

In 1794 the King expressed his willingness to raise Burke to 
the peerage, but before the proposal was carried out, Burke's 
only son Richard died. In his grief Burke was indifferent to 
the honor which meant little to him, but which he had hoped 
his son would enjoy. Instead of the peerage, two pensions of 
^1200 and ^2500 were given to him by the King directly 
without the formality of a parliamentary grant. This circum- 
stance was harshly criticised in the House of Lords by the 
Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale. Deeply 
wounded, Burke wrote A Letter to a Noble Lord, a defense of 
his pensions and a review of his life. 

In the summer of 1797 Burke died, and according to his 
own wish, was buried in the little church at Beaconsfield. 

All of Burke's public life was devoted to the one purpose of 
preserving and aiding his country and its constitution. No 
other statesman ever sacrificed his own interests as an indi- 
vidual more unselfishly and completely to the interests of the 
state. During his life he never received his reward, but to-day, 
when the words of his contemporaries are forgotten, a knowl- 
edge of his writings is necessary for a complete understand- 
ing of politics. Everything that he wrote was with a loyal 



INTRODUCTION XV 

purpose for the public good, not for personal advancement- 
His life was a life of action, of constant endeavor to perform 
the high duties of a citizen, in which he was not aided by 
wealth or rank. He had to fight his way : " Nitor in adver- 
sum is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of 
the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend 
men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made 
for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of win- 
ning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the 
people. At every step of my progress in life (for in every step 
was I traversed and opposed), and at every turnpike I met, I 
was obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove 
my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a 
proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the 
whole system of its interests both abroad and at home." 1 

The best and most comprehensive view of his public career 
can be got by separating it into several divisions according to 
the main objects of his interest, — his work for Ireland, for 
America, for his party and country, for India, and against the 
French Revolution. No one of these objects was considered 
alone on any occasion; however closely he might focus his 
attention on a particular question, he never forgot its relations 
to the whole question of government; he always worked for 
Great Britain. 

FOR IRELAND 

All through his public life Burke tried to help the country 
of his birth and education. Ireland surely needed the help 
of a statesman. Of the three million inhabitants, two mil- 
lion were Roman Catholics, who were almost slaves of the 

1 Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord, edited by A. H. Smyth, Standard 
English Classics, p. 21. 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Protestants. By the penal laws of 1691, a Roman Catholic 
was debarred from education, from the franchise of citizen- 
ship, from the ownership of land, and the guardianship of 
his children. The trade of Ireland was much restricted, more 
so even than that of the American colonies. English states- 
men looked on Ireland only as " an object that they did not 
know how to give up." x 

Most of the ambitious Irishmen went to England, where they 
soon forgot their mother country. The historian Froude says : 
" If Edmund Burke had remained in the country where Provi- 
dence had placed him, he might have changed the current of 
its history." 2 Necessity, rather than ambition, led Burke from 
Ireland, for the Irish law required that a barrister should study 
in the London courts before practising at home. His subse- 
quent quarrel with his father determined his stay ; but he 
never forgot Ireland — "this important melancholy subject." 
He was always in correspondence with friends there, among 
whom were the leaders of both the Protestants and the Roman 
Catholics. He visited the country at least five times, and, with 
one exception, on Irish business always. 

About the year 1765 Burke prepared a Tract on the Penal 
or Popery Laws, which showed how thoroughly the political 
philosopher understood the nature, causes, and consequences 
of these laws. In 1778 it was proposed to lessen the restric- 
tions upon Irish Catholics by permitting them to own land 
and to maintain schools. By frequent interviews with English 
statesmen and by letters to Irish legislators, Burke assisted 
in the passage of the bill. This led to the formation of the 
Protestant Association and the Lord George Gordon riots of 
1780, in which the supporters of the Catholics were attacked 
by a mob in London and many houses burned. 

1 Burke's Correspondence, London, 1844, HL 4 T 9- 

2 Froude's History 0/ Ireland, New York, 1874, II, 213. 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

In 1782 Burke again pleaded against the reenactment of the 
penal laws, for he hoped that by neglect they would become 
inactive. His influence with the Irish Parliament made it 
abandon the proposal to tax the proprietors of landed estates 
in Ireland, whose ordinary residence was in England. The 
chief objection was that such a law would tend to separate, 
not to unite the two countries. Ten years later the Irish 
Catholics asked Burke's son to become their attorney, and 
the majority of Burke's letters from this time until the death 
of his son concern religious toleration in Ireland. The very 
last letter that he dictated was on the subject of permitting 
the Catholics to vote ; but this just concession was not granted 
until two years after his death. 

In Burke's opinion the most important Irish question con- 
cerned the commercial restrictions. "Alas! it is not about 
popes, but about potatoes, that the minds of this unhappy people 
are agitated." 1 Burke saw that the same blind commercial pol- 
icy that had lost the American colonies was destroying Ireland. 
In 1778 he earnestly supported the demands of the Irish for 
some relief from the taxation on their commerce. This was 
reluctantly granted, for the English merchants, especially those 
of Bristol, protested vigorously, fearing Irish competition. Yet 
seven years later Burke opposed the greater concessions offered 
by the new Prime Minister, Pitt, who proposed that Ireland 
should receive complete free trade, and in return should devote 
a certain portion of her internal revenue to the support of 
the navy of Great Britain. Burke's inconsistent action was 
denounced by his Irish friends. He was influenced too much 
by party prejudice against Pitt; or he was too much absorbed in 
the affairs of India, to give these measures proper consideration. 

Matthew Arnold has said : " Burke is the greatest of our 
political thinkers and writers. But his political thinking and 

1 Burke's Works, VI, 399. 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

writing has more value on some subjects than on others ; the 
value is at its 'height when the subject is Ireland." 1 As a 
whole, Burke's writings about. Irish questions have little value 
as literature, because they are chiefly formal state papers and 
personal letters to Irish friends on questions of detail. Few 
of his speeches on Irish affairs have been preserved, because 
the English public was little interested in the subject. Yet 
the wrongs of Ireland were constantly in Burke's thoughts ; he 
seldom spoke on any subject in Parliament without in some 
way referring to his native country. 



FOR AMERICA 

When Burke entered Parliament in January, 1766, the 
attention of all the "members was centered on the reorganiza- 
tion of the financial condition of the country, which the pre- 
vious minister, Grenville, had left in great disorder. Grenvillc 
had attempted to increase the resources of the state by impos- 
ing a tax on all legal papers in the American colonies. The 
Americans strongly opposed this Stamp Act, declaring that it 
was unjust to tax Englishmen without representation, whether 
they were in England or in America. The men who had 
been appointed commissioners for the sale of the new stamps, 
were forced to resign. The most effective opposition was the 
agreement among the American merchants that they would 
not import any merchandise from England while the Stamp 
Act was in force. 

The first work of the Rockingham ministry was to repeal the 
Stamp Act, but unfortunately they also passed the Declaratory 
Act, which asserted that, although in certain cases, such as this, 

1 Edmund Burke on Irish Affairs, edited by Matthew Arnold, Lon- 
don, 1 88 1, p. vi. 



INTRODUCTION xix 

it was not expedient to tax the colonists, England had the 
right to impose such taxes. The colonists were so well pleased 
with the repeal of the Stamp Act that probably they would 
never have energetically opposed the Declaratory Act, if that 
had been all. But the Rockingham ministry was not popular, 
and the succeeding ministry in 1767 passed the Townshend 
Acts, which imposed a duty on all glass, paper, painters' colors, 
red lead, white lead, and tea imported into America. The cost 
of enforcing these taxes against the indignant colonists was 
more than they yielded in revenue, and after two years Par- 
liament thought it more economical to repeal these taxes, 
except that on tea, which was kept in force to assert England's 
right to impose such a tax. This was sufficient to maintain the 
irritation of the colonists. 

The leading Americans and the Whigs in England had ear- 
nestly advocated and sought measures of conciliation. As early 
as May, 1770, Burke had proposed eight resolutions censuring 
the ministry for dissolving the colonial assemblies, which had 
petitioned the king on the right of taxation, and for attempting 
to anticipate the action of Parliament in promising the repeal 
of the existing taxes. 

The feelings of the colonists found an outlet in acts of ven- 
geance, such as the burning of the Gaspee off Rhode Island 
in 1772. The greatest act of violence occurred in Boston in 
December, 1773. The tax on tea had destroyed the American 
trade, and the East India Company had suffered so much from 
this curtailment of sales and from the loss in value of the 
tea stored in its warehouses, that it was unable to pay the 
usual subsidy of ^400,000 a year to the government for its 
monopoly. The English legislators did not appreciate the 
American spirit, and, by granting a drawback on the tax on 
tea, encouraged the company to send four shiploads to Bos- 
ton, New York, Philadelphia, and Charlestown. This drawback 



XX INTRODUCTION 

enabled it to sell tea in America at a price less than that of 
tea smuggled from Holland. But the Americans were not to 
be bribed by the lower price. In all the towns except Boston, 
the citizens forced the merchants to whom the tea had been 
sent, to refuse to accept it. In Boston a party of citizens dis- 
guised themselves as Indians and threw the tea into the harbor. 

When the news of this " Boston Tea Party " reached Eng- 
land, the enraged Parliament did all in its power to punish 
the offenders. The Boston Port Bill closed the port to all 
commerce until the town should pay the company for the tea. 
The Regulating Act annulled the charter of Massachusetts and 
placed the colony under the military control of General Gage, 
whose troops were to be quartered on the town. The Quebec 
Act gave to Canada all the land west of the Ohio River, which 
had belonged to the different colonies. Far from repressing 
the American spirit, these acts increased it, and the colonists 
united against these infringements of their rights. 

The united opposition alarmed many Englishmen, among 
others Mr. Rose Fuller, who, thinking that the tax on tea 
was the chief cause of resistance, moved in the House of 
Commons on April 19, 1774, that this tax be repealed. This 
motion was discussed by five members, and then supported 
by Burke in his speech on American Taxation. A few men 
spoke briefly in favor of the bill ; one opponent criticised what 
Burke had said of Grenville; and Lord North briefly declared 
that firmness, and not fear, should rule. Despite the lack of 
opposing speeches, the motion was defeated by a vote of 49 
to 182. Various schemes of conciliation were later suggested 
by Lord North and by Burke, who in 1775 outlined his plan 
in his famous speech on Conciliation with America, which was 
rejected by a vote of 78 to 270. 

Burke did not yield to discouragement. In May, 1775, as 
agent for the colony of New York, he presented to the 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

Commons the remonstrance of the General Assembly of New 
York, but it was not accepted. His last effort to offer concili- 
ation was on November 16, 1775. Soon after this, many of 
the Whigs, who were in the minority, felt that their efforts to 
restrain penal acts against America were ineffective and served 
only to irritate the ministry to greater repressive measures. 
Consequently Burke and some of his associates stayed away 
from the sessions of the House of Commons. Burke defended 
this action in A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in which he 
criticised the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in the col- 
onies. He also denounced the government for hiring 12,000 
Hessians to fight against the colonists. In 1779 Burke pro- 
posed a motion censuring the ministry for advising General 
Burgoyne to employ Indians as allies. This ended Burke's 
efforts to influence American affairs, although he continued 
to take an active part in opposition to the ministry. 

Of the speeches on American Taxation and on Co?iciliation 
with America, Professor C. A. Goodrich says : "After all that 
has been written on the origin of our Revolution, there is 
nowhere else to be found so admirable a summation of the 
causes which produced it. . . . His standpoint in the first was 
England. His topics were the inconsistency and folly of the 
ministry in their ' miserable circle of occasional arguments 
and temporary expedients ' for raising a revenue in America. 
His object was to recall the House to the original principles 
of the English colonial system — that of regulating the trade 
of the colonies, and making it subservient to the interests of 
the mother country, while in other respects she left them 
1 every characteristic mark of a free people in all their internal 
concerns.' His standpoint in the second speech was America. 
His topics were her growing population, agriculture, com- 
merce, and fisheries ; the causes of her fierce spirit of liberty ; 
the impossibility of repressing it by force ; and the consequent 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

necessity of some concession on the part of England. His 
object was (waiving all abstract questions about the right of 
taxation) to show that Parliament ought ' to admit the people 
of the colonies into an interest in the constitution,' by giving 
them (like Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham) a share in 
the representation ; and to do this, by leaving internal taxa- 
tion to the colonial assemblies, since no one could think of an 
actual representation of America in Parliament at the distance 
of three thousand miles. The two speeches were equally 
diverse in their spirit. The first was in the strain of incessant 
attack, full of the keenest sarcasm, and shaped from beginning 
to end for the purpose of putting down the ministry. The 
second, like the plan it proposed, was conciliatory ; temperate 
and respectful toward Lord North ; designed to inform those 
who were ignorant of the real strength and feelings of America; 
instinct with the finest philosophy of man and of social insti- 
tutions ; and intended, if possible, to lead the House, through 
Lord North's scheme, into a final adjustment of the dispute 
on the true principles of English liberty." Referring again to 
American Taxation, Goodrich says : " No speech had ever been 
delivered in the Parliament of Great Britain so full at once of 
deep research, cogent reasoning, cutting sarcasm, graphic de- 
scription, profound political wisdom, and fervid declamation." 1 

FOR HIS PARTY AND HIS COUNTRY 

Burke supported his party not only by speeches in Parlia- 
ment, but also by pamphlets. His first political pamphlet was 
published in 1766, A Short Account of a Late Short Adminis- 
tration; in this he briefly recapitulated the important meas- 
ures passed by the Rockingham ministry. Three years later 
he defended his party against the criticisms of Grenville. 
1 C. A. Goodrich's British Eloquence, New York, 1852, pp. 215,241. 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

In his Observations on the Present State of the Nation, Burke 
showed a remarkable comprehension of the principles and sta- 
tistics of national commerce. Although Grenville was supposed 
to have the greatest statistical knowledge of the condition of 
the country, Burke very easily disclosed misstatements and 
contradictions in Grenville's pamphlet. Burke himself said : 
"The first session I sat in Parliament I found it necessary 
to analyze the whole commercial, constitutional, and foreign 
interests of Great Britain and its empire." l 

In 1770 Burke wrote a more important pamphlet, which em- 
bodied the principles of the Rockingham party. In Thoughts 
on the Cause of the Present Discontents, he traced all the 
national difficulties to the existence of a group, known as 
"the King's friends," which really directed the government 
in secret, although the ministry executed its plans publicly. 
Burke dubbed this system " the double cabinet." His sug- 
gested reform was to restore the government to the control of 
a political party composed of prominent noblemen and land- 
owners. The pamphlet closed with a defense of the party form 
of government, which is almost the only defense that a states- 
man has made of what most men consider a necessary evil. 
Burke denied that all political connections are in their nature 
factions, and as such, ought to be destroyed. He insisted that 
when bad men combine, which they always will do to obtain 
their base purposes, the good men must associate. Party, he 
said, is a body of men united for promoting by their joint 
endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle 
in which they are all agreed. 2 

Burke took such an active part in the opposition that he 
was supposed to be the author of the anonymous Junius' 
Letters, published in the Public Advertiser from 1768 to 1772, 

1 Letter to a Noble Lord, Standard English Classics, p. 20. 

2 Burke's Works, I, 530. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

which attacked the ministers in powerful but scurrilous lan- 
guage. Burke denied the authorship, and it now seems most 
probable that the Letters were written by (Sir) Philip Francis, 
who later was Burke's associate in the prosecution of Warren 
Hastings. Whenever his party thought it wise to make any 
public statement of importance, Burke was called upon to 
write it. In 1788-89, when George III was temporarily 
insane, Burke was kept busy preparing letters and addresses 
for the Prince of Wales, who hoped to be regent. 

Early in 1780 Burke proposed in the House of Commons 
his bill for Economical Reform, which was finally passed in 
1782. It reduced the expenses of administration by abolishing 
the costly judicial and revenue systems of Wales, Lancaster, 
Chester, and Cornwall, which were separate from those of the 
rest of England ; by abolishing certain lucrative and honorary 
offices of the royal household — relics of feudalism — such as 
the Royal Turnspit ; by limiting the gross amount of pensions ; 
and by reducing the salary of the Paymaster General. 

When his party came into power in 1782, Burke was 
appointed to this office of Paymaster General. He deserved 
a more important office, but did not receive it, probably because 
of his notoriously straitened circumstances, his ungoverned 
excesses of party zeal and political passion, and the unjust 
prejudice and clamor against him and his family that they 
were Roman Catholics and Irish adventurers, — " that hunt of 
obloquy which has ever pursued me with a full cry through 
life." Three months later Lord Rockingham died ; Shel- 
burne attempted to hold the ministry together, but was soon 
succeeded by the Coalition ministry, in which Fox and Burke 
joined with their former enemy, Lord North. But they were 
soon forced to resign by the defeat of Fox's East India Bill, 
and, with the exception of a few months, the Whigs were not 
in power again for half a century. 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

In 1 79 1 Burke had his great fight with his party, the Whigs. 
The year before had appeared his remarkable Reflections on 
the Revolution in France, and in every debate he opposed the 
Revolution in passionate terms. His party colleagues attempted 
to restrain him, and failing, urged him to withdraw from Parlia- 
ment. Very soon he published a defense of his action, entitled 
An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. He proved that 
he had not been inconsistent in supporting the Americans in 
their struggle for liberty, and in opposing the French Revolu- 
tion, for he loved a manly, moral, regulated liberty, and not 
the unrestricted freedom or anarchy which the French de- 
manded. He declared that, although the sovereignty had origi- 
nated with the people, they had granted it to an hereditary 
kingship ; and that the aristocracy and leaders of the commons 
constitute the controlling power, and not the mere majority 
of citizens counted by the head. 

In 1794 Burke retired from active public life to his estate 
at Beaconsfield. He was very much alarmed the next spring 
to observe that all his wheat was blighted. In the fall the crop 
throughout the country was found to be very small, and the con- 
sequent high price of provisions caused great suffering among 
the poorer people. When Parliament assembled to discuss 
measures of relief, Burke felt compelled to write a pamphlet 
called Thoughts and Details 011 Scarcity. In it he counseled 
delay, declaring that the government could prevent much evil, 
but could not do much positive good, because the purpose of 
government was, not to support, but to control the people. 

Many superficial critics have tried to sum up Burke's public 
work by quoting Goldsmith's humorous poem, Retaliation: 

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much ; 
Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 



xx vi INTRODUCTION 

They forget that these verses were written in 1774, twenty- 
three years before Burke's death ; they forget that most of his 
so-called " party pamphlets " are still quoted as authority in 
questions of national economy. 



FOR INDIA 

Of all her colonial possessions England was most interested 
in India, the commerce of which was monopolized by the 
East India Company. The recent triumphs of Clive over the 
French and the native princes had brought India into great 
prominence. It was regarded as a vast treasure house of 
revenue. The shareholders of the company were continually 
clamoring for dividends ; the ministers demanded subsidies 
from the company in addition to the large duties on tea ; and 
the young Englishmen who went out to India as clerks of the 
company expected to return, and actually did return, in a few 
years with large fortunes, even though their salaries scarcely 
covered their living expenses. No one seemed to consider 
the natives, their needs and rights. 

Burke first became interested in India because his relatives, 
William and Richard Burke, were speculating in the stock of 
the company. Later his opposition to Lord North led him to 
defend the company against the demands of the ministry. The 
company was not able to pay the annual subsidy of ^400,000 
and Parliament ordered an investigation of its affairs. In fear 
of radical innovations, the directors decided to anticipate the 
action of Parliament by sending out to India a board of super- 
visors, composed of Burke and two others, with authority to 
investigate and regulate all the affairs of the company. After 
much deliberation Burke declined to go, feeling that his party 
needed him at home. 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

The condition of the company became worse, and in 1773 
it was forced to appeal to Parliament for a loan of ^1,500,000. 
This loan was granted, but with restrictions that practically 
placed the company in the hands of the ministers. A year 
later this control was increased by the Regulating Act, which 
made the board of directors self-perpetuating, established a 
judicature independent of the executive, and created the office 
of Governor General of India. 

Six years later Burke's interest in India was stimulated by 
the return of Philip Francis, a member of the Council of 
Bengal, who had quarreled with Governor Hastings. William 
Burke had become the European agent of the Nabob of 
Tanjore, which, despite his protests, was later made tributary 
to Madras. From these men Burke learned of the misman- 
agement and cruelty of the company, for which they blamed 
Hastings. In 1781 Burke was elected a member of a commit- 
tee of the House of Commons to investigate and regulate the 
administration of justice in Bengal. He worked unweariedly, 
reading records, hearing evidence, and drafting reports, two 
of which, the Ninth and the Eleventh, were written by him. 
The Ninth Report showed that the commercial policy of the 
company was self-destructive ; India gave everything and re- 
ceived almost nothing. The internal trade was greatly hampered 
by monopolies granted to English favorites. The Eleventh 
Report was chiefly a charge of corruption against Hastings. 

Late in 1783 Fox proposed his East India Bill. The aim 
of the bill was to make all Englishmen in India responsible 
to a board of commissioners, appointed by the ministers, 
which should have absolute authority over the company and 
all English interests in India, although the details of adminis- 
tration and of commerce were left in the hands of a board of 
directors elected by the stockholders. In support of this bill 
Burke delivered one of his greatest speeches. He was careful 



xxv iii INTRODUCTION 

to make clear the Indian terms and to present definite pic- 
tures by comparison with objects familiar to his hearers. The 
English dominions in India were likened to the empire of 
Germany,— the Nabob of Oude to the king of Prussia. He 
pointed out the common interests of England and India : 
" Every means effectual to preserve India from oppression is 
a guard to preserve the British constitution from its worst 
corruption." 1 He declared that the company was responsible 
to Parliament for the proper exercise of the political power 
granted by its charter, and that it had greatly abused this 
power. " Indeed, no trace of equitable government is found 
in their politics, not one trace of commercial principle in 
their mercantile dealing." 2 

In spite of vigorous opposition the bill passed the House 
of Commons, but was defeated in the House of Lords by the 
influence of the King. The Coalition ministry was forced to 
resign, and the young William Pitt became Prime Minister. 
He at once passed a bill which attempted to preserve the 
charter of the company by leaving the administration of its 
affairs to the directors and by giving the supreme authority 
over civil and military matters to a board of control nominated 
by the King and directly responsible to Parliament. This 
system of double government lasted until 1858, when the 
direct government of India was transferred from the company 
to the crown. 

The first act of the board of control was to return the 
^2,000,000 which the Nabob of Arcot said he had borrowed 
from employees of the company. Fox and Burke urged Par- 
liament to order an investigation of these debts, because it 
seemed impossible for the minor officers of the company to 
have lent such enormous sums. Part of the money was 
supposed to have been paid for troops to destroy Hyder Ali 
1 Burke's Works, II, 436. 2 Ibid., 508. 



INTRODUCTION xxlx 

Khan, who held the western portion of the main peninsula 
of Hindustan, as the Nabob of Arcot held the eastern. The 
most remarkable part of Burke's speech was his description of 
how Hyder Ali Khan, perceiving the plot against him, gathered 
a wild horde of soldiers and devastated the frontier of Arcot 
completely depopulating a district as large as England and 
destroying the ten thousand reservoirs necessary for the culti- 
vation of the land. 

Burke now gave up hope that the evils m India could be 
remedied by a change in administration, and determined to 
prevent any future governor from repeating the cruelties and 
unjust acts of Hastings by impeaching Hastings before he 
House of Lords. Burke was not influenced by any hostile 
personal motives. The only question with him was "whether 
we would lose India through a mistaken humanity to the 
persons who had been the authors of our misfortunes, or save 
India and fifteen millions of people, by properly punishing 
those that had so materially misbehaved." 1 

In April, .786, he presented against Hastings in the House 
of Commons twenty-two charges of high crimes and mis- 
demeanors in office. Two years later a committee of twenty 
managers, with Burke as chairman, was appointed to impeach 
Hastings before the House of Lords. On February 13, 1788. 
the trial began in Westminster Hall before the greatest assembly 
that had ever met in England. Burke opened the prosecution 
with a speech lasting four days, which introduced and explained 
the charges, but did not attempt to confirm them. 

Three years were spent by Fox, Burke, Shendan, and other 
managers in presenting the charges and examining the w,t- 
nessef, and three more years by the replies of Mr. Hastings 
iawyers. In i 79 4 Burke made a report to the House o Com- 
mons on the duration of the trial, showing that although the 

1 Burke's Works, IX, 331. 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

trial had dragged through seven years, the court had been in 
session only one hundred and eighteen days, because the judges 
were compelled to be absent on circuit much of the time. Late 
in May, 1794, Burke closed the trial with a speech of nine 
days, in which he reviewed all the circumstances of the charges. 

One year later Hastings was acquitted by the Lords by a 
vote of 23 to 6. Burke's enormous work had seemingly failed ; 
but in reality he had won. He had established the principle 
that an Englishman in India, or anywhere else, must act 
according to the same moral principles that control his acts 
in England. After this no governor ever dared to follow the 
example of Hastings. Burke had taught the great lesson that 
" Asiatics have rights and Europeans have obligations ; that a 
superior race is bound to observe the highest current morality 
of the time in all its dealings with the subject race." * 

Most men who are familiar with the life of Burke, will 
agree with what he wrote two years before his death : "If I 
were to call for a reward (which I have never done), it should 
be for those [services], in which, for fourteen years without 
intermission, I showed the most industry and had the least 
success ; I mean in the affairs of India. They are those on 
which I value myself the most ; most for the importance, most 
for the labor, most for the judgment, most for constancy and 
perseverance." 2 



AGAINST THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The beginning of the French Revolution was warmly 
applauded in England by many Whigs, who rejoiced in the 
effort of the French people to free themselves from despoti : 

1 Motley's Burke, p. 133. 

'-' Letter to a Noble Lord, Standard English Classics, p. 20. 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

burdens. Burke, however, feared that the Revolution would 
have a demoralizing influence in England. Before a year had 
gone by, he published his Reflections on the Revolution in France, 
which was enthusiastically received and ran through eleven 
editions in one year, about eighty thousand copies being sold. 
The average Englishman had not known what to think of 
the Revolution ; when he read Burke's sound reasons for 
disapproving of it, he adopted them as his own and at once 
condemned it. This book was the most potent factor in 
molding the English attitude. 

Burke argued that a man's opinion of the Revolution should 
be formed slowly, upon knowledge of the circumstances, for 
"circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme 
beneficial or noxious to mankind." * Not all kinds of liberty are 
worthy of approval, — only a manly, moral, regulated liberty. 
The principles upheld in the English Revolution of 1688 did 
not, as some Englishmen claimed, justify the French Revolu- 
tion. The excesses of the French Assembly in destroying even 
what was good in the government was not surprising when 
the composition of the National Assembly was considered. 
The members had little political experience, and, carried away 
by theories on the rights of man, had not wisdom enough to 
constitute an effective government, for " government is a con- 
trivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants." 2 
They might have looked to liberty-loving England for example, 
where the officers of the church were exalted, and the ministers 
of state consecrated, by the indissoluble union of church and 
state. He also criticised the measures of the Assembly to 
reorganize the municipal governments and to weaken the 
power of the king. With marvellous foresight he predicted 
that in the frequent changes of government, some popular 
general, filled with the spirit of command, would obtain control 
1 Burke's Works, III, 240. 2 Ibid., Ill, 310. 



xxxii INTRODUCTION 

of the army, and by its power would become the head of the 
state. This prophecy was fulfilled nine years later in Napo- 
leon. 

Burke heartily disapproved of the Revolution because it de- 
graded royalty which he respected, because it overthrew the 
religion which he venerated, and because it abolished ancient 
institutions which he honored. 

Early in 1791 Burke wrote a long Letter to a Member of the 
National Asse?nbly in France, in answer to some objections to 
the Reflections. He said that help for better government in 
France must come from without, and would be readily granted, 
for no country in Europe could consider itself secure " whilst 
there is established in the very center of it a state (if so it may 
be called) founded on the principles of anarchy, and which 
is in reality a college of armed fanatics, for the propagation 
of the principles of assassination, robbery, rebellion, fraud, 
oppression, and impiety." 1 In his next work, An Appeal 
from the New to the Old Whigs, he pointed out in greater 
detail the difference between the French Revolution and the 
English Revolution of 1688. 

In his Thoughts on French Affairs, which was addressed in 
1 791 to the ministers of state, Burke compared the French 
Revolution to the Reformation, because it was a revolution of 
doctrine and not of faction. He closed the pamphlet by say- 
ing : " I have done with this subject, I believe, forever. It has 
given me many anxious moments for the last two years." 2 He 
did not foresee that it would form the main thoughts of the 
next six years of his life. Hardly had a year passed before 
another pamphlet appeared, called Heads for Consideration on 
the Present State of Affairs. It was a mere collection of notes, 
showing the special danger of Spain, the failure of the Duke of 
Brunswick's attempt to invade France, and declaring that, in 
1 Burke's Works, IV, 17. 2 Ibid., IV, 377. 



INTRODUCTION xxxill 

all European combinations against France, England was the 
natural leader. 

England finally joined with the other European countries 
against France, but carried on the war in such a half-hearted 
way that in 1793 Burke published his Remarks on the Policy 
of the Allies, which criticised their neglect to take advantage 
of the French exiles in their campaigns. 

In 1796 Burke published the first two Letters on the Regicide 
Peace. In the first Letter he criticised the overtures for peace 
made to France. The second Letter discussed the nature and 
character of the Revolution in its relation to other countries. 
Burke declared that the existing war was a war between the 
partisans of the ancient civil, moral, and political order of 
Europe and a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists, which 
sought to change them all. 

Soon after Burke's death the third and fourth Letters were 
published. The third Letter denounced the French for their 
lack of statesmanship. The fourth Letter was the least inter- 
esting of all, criticising the lack of foresight of the English 
ambassador to France. 

Mr. John Morley says of these Letteis : "They are deplor- 
able. They contain passages of fine philosophy and of skilful 
and plausible reasoning, but such passages only make us won- 
der how they come to be where they are. The reader is in no 
humor for them. In splendor of rhetoric, in fine images, in 
sustention, in irony, they surpass anything that Burke ever 
wrote ; but of the qualities and principles that, far more than 
his rhetoric, have made Burke so admirable and so great — 
of justice, of firm grasp of fact, of a reasonable sense of the 
probabilities of things — there are only traces enough to light 
up the gulfs of empty words, reckless phrases, and senseless 
vituperations, that surge and boil around them." 1 

1 Morley's Burke, p. 199. 



Xxxiv 1 INTRODUCTION 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 

The best method of studying this speech on American Taxa- 
tion is to make an outline or a brief of it. An argument is 
seldom followed or understood by a student, unless he attempts 
to state it in his own words. He should sum up the meaning 
of each paragraph in a single sentence, and then by means of 
symbols show the relation of these sentences to each other. 
The speech may be divided into four parts. 

1. The introduction, consisting of the first five paragraphs. 
The first paragraph states the character of the debate ; the second, 
the character of the preceding speech ; the third, the inconsistency 
of the preceding speaker; the fourth, the reasons why Burke prefers 
the historical method of discussion; and the fifth, Burke's apology 
for following temporarily the other method of deliberation. They 
may be outlined as follows : 

i. The subject of debate on American taxation is trite. 

2. The preceding speech was full of challenges which Burke 
will discuss in a friendly spirit. 

3. The preceding speaker was inconsistent, because he declared 
that the debate must be limited to the provisions of the motion, 
and yet he demanded historical detail. 

4. Burke prefers this historical mode, which is founded on 
experience, although 

5. he will briefly look over the subject on the narrow ground. 

The rest of the speech may be divided as follows : 

II. The "narrow ground for the repeal" (pp. 6-25). 

1. The repeal will not lead to demands for other concessions. 

2. The repeal will abolish the preamble of the Act of 1767, 
which is inconsistent with later acts of Parliament. 

3. The repeal has been promised by the government. 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

III. The " broader ground for the repeal " (pp. 25-59). 

1. The policy of the Navigation Acts. 

2. The policy of Grenville. 

3. The policy of the Rockingham ministry. 

4. The policy of Townshend. 

IV. The conclusion or peroration ; the appeal for action (pp. 
60-68). 

This outline should be filled out in detail by the student. 

After a student has studied the speech as a whole, he should 
take up particular portions of it for more detailed considera- 
tion. For instance, he should notice how consecutive para- 
graphs are linked together by catch-words, usually conjunctions 
or pronouns. In the opening sentence of the second paragraph 
will be found words, such as also or this, the meaning of which 
can be discovered only by referring back to the first paragraph. 
Sometimes the connection does not appear in any one word, 
but in the thought. 

Interesting essays may be prepared and read to the class on 
such subjects as the following : 

1. The aphorisms in this speech. Make a complete list of 
them, classify them, and then write an explanation of the meaning 
and application of one of them. 

2. The figures of the speech. Are they numerous? Does one 
kind predominate ? 

3. The resistance to the Stamp Act. 

4. The Boston Tea Party. 

5. The East India Company. 

6. A comparison of the House of Commons with the House of 
Representatives of the United States. 

7. The colonial governments. 

8. The life of the Earl of Chatham. 



xxxvi INTRODUCTION 

9. The government of the colonies of the United States, — 
Porto Rico, and the Philippines. 

10. The present government of the English dependencies, — 
Canada, India, Australia. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Edmund Burke: Works. Boston, 1899. 12 vols. 

E. J. Payne: Burke ; Select Works. 

F. G. Selby : Burke's American Speeches. 
C. A. Goodrich : British Eloquence. 

John Morley : Edmund Biirke. (English Men of Letters 
Series.) 

James Prior: Edmund Burke. 

J. R. Green : History of the English People. 

W. E. H. Lecky : England in the Eighteenth Centu?y. 

George Bancroft: History of the United States. 

John Fiske : American Revolution. 

Dictionary of National Biography. 



SPEECH 

O F 

EDMUND BURKE, Esq, 

O N 

AMERICAN TAXATION, 

APRIL io, x 774 , 
THE SECOND EDITION. 






LONDON: 

Printed for J. DODSLEY, in Pall-Malw 
MDCCLXXV. 

[Price TWO SHILLINGS.] 



PREFACE 



The following speech has been much the subject of conver- 
sation ; and the desire of having it printed was last summer 
very general. The means of gratifying the public curiosity 
were obligingly furnished from the notes of some gentlemen, 
members of the last Parliament. 5 

This piece has been for some months ready for the press. 
But a delicacy, possibly over-scrupulous, has delayed the publi- 
cation to this time. The friends of administration have been 
used to attribute a great deal of the opposition to their meas- 
ures in America to the writings published in England. The editor 10 
of this speech kept it back, until all the measures of government 
have had their full operation, and can be no longer affected, if 
ever they could have been affected, by any publication. 

Most readers will recollect the uncommon pains taken at 
the beginning of the last session of the last Parliament, and 15 
indeed during the whole course of it, to asperse the characters, 
and decry the measures, of those who were supposed to be 
friends to America; in order to weaken the effect of their 
opposition to the acts of rigor then preparing against the col- 
onies. This speech contains a full refutation of the charges 20 
against that party with which Mr. Burke has all along acted. 
In doing this, he has taken a review of the effects of all the 
schemes which have been successively adopted in the govern- 
ment of the plantations. The subject is interesting ; the matters 
of information various, and important ; and the publication at 25 
this time, the editor hopes, will not be thought unseasonable. 



SPEECH OF EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. 

During the last session of the last Parliament, on the 19th 
of April, 1774, Mr. Rose Fuller, member for Rye, made the 
following motion ; That an act made in the seventh year of 

.3 



4 EDMUND BURKE 

the reign of his present Majesty, intituled, " An act for grant- 
ing certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in 
America ; for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs 
upon the exportation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoa 
5 nuts, of the produce of the said colonies or plantations ; for 
discontinuing the drawbacks payable on china earthen ware 
exported to America ; and for more effectually preventing the 
clandestine running of goods in the said colonies and plan- 
tations ; " might be read. 

10 And the same being read accordingly; he moved, "That 
this House will, upon this day sevennight, resolve itself into a 
committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the 
duty of 3</. per pound weight upon tea, payable in all his 
Majesty's dominions in America, imposed by the said act; 

15 and also the appropriation of the said duty." 

On this latter motion a warm and interesting debate arose, 
in which Mr. Edmund Burke spoke as follows : 

Sir, 

I agree with the honorable gentleman who spoke last, that 

20 this subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to 
this House, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace 
and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more 
familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we 
have been lashed round and round this miserable circle of 

25 occasional arguments and temporary expedients. I am sure 
our heads must turn, and our stomachs nauseate with them. 
We have had them in every shape ; we have looked at them 
in every point of view. Invention is exhausted ; reason is 
fatigued ; experience has given judgment ; but obstinacy is 

30 not yet conquered. 

The honorable gentleman has made one endeavor more to 
diversify the form of this disgusting argument. He has thrown 
out a speech composed almost entirely of challenges. Chal- 
lenges are serious things ; and as he is a man of prudence as 

35 well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed those 



AMERICAN TAXATION 5 

challenges before he delivered them. I had long the happi- 
ness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree with 
the honorable gentleman on all the American questions. My 
sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him ; and I thought I 
had been perfectly acquainted with his. Though I find myself 5 
mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of an old 
friendship ; he will permit me to apply myself to the House 
under the sanction of his authority; and, on the various 
grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor 
opinions which I have formed upon a matter of importance 10 
enough to demand the fullest consideration I could bestow 
upon it. 

He has stated to the House two grounds of deliberation ; 
one narrow and simple, and merely confined to the question 
on your paper: the other more large and more complicated; 15 
comprehending the whole series of the parliamentary proceed- 
ings with regard to America, their causes, and their conse- 
quences. With regard to the latter ground, he states it as useless, 
and thinks it may be even dangerous, to enter into so extensive 
a field of inquiry. Yet, to my surprise, he had hardly laid down 20 
this restrictive proposition, to which his authority would have 
given so much weight, when directly, and with the same 
authority, he condemns it; and declares it absolutely neces- 
sary to enter into the most ample historical detail. His zeal 
has thrown him a little out of his usual accuracy. In this per- 25 
plexity what shall we do, Sir, who are willing to submit to the 
law he gives us? He has reprobated in one part of his speech 
the rule he had laid down for debate in the other ; and, after 
narrowing the ground for all those who are to speak after him, 
he takes an excursion himself, as unbounded as the subject and 30 
the extent of his great abilities. 

Sir, when I cannot obey all his laws, I will do the best I 
can. I will endeavor to obey such of them as have the sanction 



6 EDMUND BURKE 

of his example ; and to stick to that rule, which, though not 
consistent with the other, is the most rational. He was cer- 
tainly in the right when he took the matter largely. I cannot 
prevail on myself to agree with him in his censure of his own 
5 conduct. It is not, he will give me leave to say, either useless 
or dangerous. He asserts, that retrospect is not wise ; and the 
proper, the only proper, subject of inquiry is, " not how we got 
into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it." In other 
words, we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and 

10 to reject our experience. The mode of deliberation he recom- 
mends is diametrically opposite to every rule of reason, and 
every principle of good sense established amongst mankind. 
For, that sense and that reason, I have always understood, abso- 
lutely to prescribe, whenever we are involved in difficulties 

15 from the measures we have pursued, that we should take a 
strict review of those measures, in order to correct our errors, if 
they should be corrigible ; or at least to avoid a dull uniformity 
in mischief, and the unpitied calamity of being repeatedly 
caught in the same snare. 

20 Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his his- 
torical discussion, without the least management for men or 
measures, further than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. 
But before I go into that large consideration, because I would 
omit nothing that can give the House satisfaction, I wish to 

25 tread the narrow ground to which alone the honorable gentle- 
man, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined us. 

He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax, 
agreeably to the proposition of the honorable gentleman who 
made the motion, the Americans would not take post on this 

30 concession, in order to make a new attack on the next body of 
taxes ; and whether they would not call for a repeal of the 
duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal of the 
duty on tea? Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But 



AMERICAN TAXATION 7 

I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. 
To the experience which the honorable gentleman reprobates 
in one instant, and reverts to in the next; to that experi- 
ence, without the least wavering or hesitation on my part, I 
steadily appeal ; and would to God there was no other arbiter 5 
to decide on the vote with which the House is to conclude 
this day ! 

When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, 
I affirm, first, that the Americans did not in consequence of 
this measure call upon you to give up the former parliamentary 10 
revenue which subsisted in that country ; or even any one of 
the articles which compose it. I affirm also, that when, depart- 
ing from the maxims of that repeal, you revived the scheme of 
taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonists with new 
jealousy, and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was that they 15 
quarreled with the old taxes, as well as the new ; then it was, and 
not till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative 
power ; and by the battery of such questions have shaken the 
solid structure of this empire to its deepest foundations. 

Of those two propositions I shall, before I have done, give 20 
such convincing, such damning proof, that however the con- 
trary may be whispered in circles, or bawled in newspapers, 
they never more will dare to raise their voices in this House. 
I speak with great confidence. I have reason for it. The 
ministers are with me. They at least are convinced that the 25 
repeal of the Stamp Act had not, and that no repeal can have, 
the consequences which the honorable gentleman who defends 
their measures is so much alarmed at. To their conduct I 
refer him for a conclusive answer to his objection. I carry 
my proof irresistibly into the very body of both ministry 30 
and Parliament ; not on any general reasoning growing out of 
collateral matter, but on the conduct of the honorable gentle- 
man's ministerial friends on the new revenue itself. 



8 EDMUND BURKE 

The act of 1767, which grants this tea duty, sets forth in its 
preamble, that it was expedient to raise a revenue in America, 
for the support of the civil government there, as well as for 
purposes still more extensive. To this support the act assigns 
5 six branches of duties. About two years after this act passed, 
the ministry, I mean the present ministry, thought it expedient 
to repeal five of the duties, and to leave (for reasons best known 
to themselves) only the sixth standing. Suppose any person, 
at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the minister, 

10 " Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do 
you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painters' 
colors? Let your pretense for the repeal be what it will, are 
you not thoroughly convinced, that your concessions will pro- 
duce, not satisfaction, but insolence in the Americans ; and 

15 that the giving up these taxes will necessitate the giving up of 
all the rest?" This objection was as palpable then as it is 
now; and it was as good for preserving the five duties as for 
retaining the sixth. Besides, the minister will recollect, that 
the repeal of the Stamp Act had but just preceded his repeal ; 

20 and the ill policy of that measure (had it been so impolitic as 
it has. been represented), and the mischiefs it produced, were 
quite recent. Upon the principles therefore of the honorable 
gentleman, upon the principles of the minister himself, the 
minister has nothing at all to answer. He stands condemned 

25 by himself, and by all his associates old and new, as a destroyer, 
in the first trust of finance, of the revenues ; and in the first 
rank of honor, as a betrayer of the dignity of his country. 

Most men, especially great men, do not always know their 
well-wishers. I come to rescue that noble lord out of the 

30 hands of those he calls his friends ; and even out of his own. 
I will do him the justice he is denied at home. He has not 
been this wicked or imprudent man. He knew that a repeal 
had no tendency to produce the mischiefs which give so much 



AMERICAN TAXATION 9 

alarm to his honorable friend. His work was not bad in its prin- 
ciple, but imperfect in its execution ; and the motion on your 
paper presses him only to complete a proper plan, which, by some 
unfortunate and unaccountable error, he had left unfinished. 

I hope, Sir, the honorable gentleman who spoke last, is 5 
thoroughly satisfied, and satisfied out of the proceedings of 
ministry on their own favorite act, that his fears from a repeal 
are groundless. If he is not, I leave him, and the noble lord 
who sits by him, to settle the matter, as well as they can, 
together; for if the repeal of American taxes destroys all our 10 
government in America — He is the man ! — and he is the 
worst of all the repealers, because he is the last. 

But I hear it rung continually in my ears, now and formerly, 
— " the preamble ! what will become of the preamble, if you 
repeal this tax? " — I am sorry to be compelled so often to 15 
expose the calamities and disgraces of Parliament. The pre- 
amble of this law, standing as it now stands, has the lie direct 
given to it by the provisionary part of the act ; if that can be 
called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be 
afraid to express myself in this manner, especially in the face 20 
of such a formidable array of ability as is now drawn up before 
me, composed of the ancient household troops of that side of 
the House, and the new recruits from this, if the matter were 
not clear and indisputable. Nothing but truth could give me 
this firmness ; but plain truth and clear evidence can be beat 25 
down by no ability. The clerk will be so good as to turn to 
the act, and to read this favorite preamble : 

Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your 
Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and 
adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration 30 
of justice, and support of civil government, in such provinces where 
it shall be found necessary; and towards further defraying the ex- 
penses of defending, protecting, and seeming the said dominions. 



10 EDMUND BURKE 

You have heard this pompous performance. Now where is 
the revenue which is to do all these mighty things? Five- 
sixths repealed — abandoned — sunk — gone — lost for ever. 
Does the poor solitary tea duty support the purposes of this 
5 preamble? Is not the supply there stated as effectually aban- 
doned as if the tea duty had perished in the general wreck? 
Here, Mr. Speaker, is a precious mockery — a preamble with- 
out an act — taxes granted in order to be repealed — and the 
reasons of the grant still carefully kept up ! This is raising a 

10 revenue in America ! This is preserving dignity in England ! 
If you repeal this tax in compliance with the motion, I readily 
admit that you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in 
it. The object of the act is gone already ; and all you suffer 
is the purging the statute-book of the opprobrium of an empty, 

15 absurd, and false recital. 

It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were 
repealed on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper 
in my hand ; a paper which I constantly carry about ; which I 
have often used, and shall often use again. What is got by 

20 this paltry pretense of commercial principles I know not ; for, 
if your government in America is destroyed by the repeal of 
/axes, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the repeal is 
grounded. Repeal this tax too upon commercial principles if 
you please. These principles will seTve as well now as they 

25 did formerly. But you know that, either your objection to a 
repeal from these supposed consequences has no validity, or 
that this pretense never could remove it. This commercial 
motive never was believed by any man, either in America, 
which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which it 

30 is meant to deceive. It was impossible it should. Because 
every man, in the least acquainted with the detail of com- 
merce, must know, that several of the articles on which the tax 
was repealed, were fitter objects of duties than almost any 



AMERICAN TAXATION II 

other articles that could possibly be chosen ; without compari- 
son more so, than the tea that was left taxed ; as infinitely less 
liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red and 
white lead was of this nature. You have, in this kingdom, an 
advantage in lead, that amounts to a monopoly. When you 5 
find yourself in this situation of advantage, you sometimes 
venture to tax even your own export. You did so, soon after 
the last war ; when, upon this principle, you ventured to 
impose a duty on coals. In all the articles of American 
contraband trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red lead, 10 
and white lead? You might, therefore, well enough, without 
danger of contraband, and without injury to commerce (if this 
were the whole consideration) have taxed these commodities. 
The same may be said of glass. Besides, some of the things 
taxed were so trivial, that the loss of the objects themselves, 15 
and their utter annihilation out of American commerce, would 
have been comparatively as nothing. But is the article of tea 
such an object in the trade of England, as not to be felt, or 
felt but slightly, like white lead and red lead, and painters' 
colors? Tea is an object of far other importance. Tea is per- 20 
haps the most important object, taking it with its necessary 
connections, of any in the mighty circle of our commerce. 
If commercial principles had been the true motives to the 
repeal, or had they been at all attended to, tea would have 
been the last article we should have left taxed for a subject of 25 
controversy. 

Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration ; but nothing in the 
world can read so awful and so instructive a lesson, as the con- 
duct of ministry in this business, upon the mischief of not 
having large and liberal ideas in the management of great 30 
affairs. Never have the servants of the state looked at the 
whole of your complicated interests in one connected view. 
They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time 



12 EDMUND BURKE 

and one pretense, and some at another, just as they pressed, 
without any sort of regard to their relations or dependencies. 
They never had any kind of system, right or wrong ; but only 
invented occasionally some miserable tale for the day, in order 

5 meanly to sneak out of difficulties, into which they had proudly 
strutted. And they were put to all these shifts and devices, 
full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piece- 
meal a repeal of an act, which they had not the generous 
courage, when they found and felt their error, honorably and 

10 fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible 
operation of feeble councils, so paltry a sum as threepence in 
the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article as tea in the 
eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a commercial 
empire that circled the whole globe. 

15 Do you forget that, in the very last year, you stood on the 
precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed 
great. You were distressed in the affairs of the East India 
Company ; and you well know what sort of things are involved 
in the comprehensive energy of that significant appellation. 

20 1 am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger, which 
you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to 
the world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The 
monopoly of the most lucrative trades, and the possession of 
imperial revenues, had brought you to the verge of beggary 

25 and ruin. Such was your representation — such, in some 
measure, was your case. The vent of ten millions of pounds 
of this commodity, now locked up by the operation of an inju- 
dicious tax, and rotting in the warehouses of the company, 
would have prevented all this distress, and all that series of 

30 desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged to 
take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that 
vent, which no other part of the world can furnish but America ; 
where tea is next to a necessary of life; and where the demand 



AMERICAN TAXATION I 3 

grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India 
committees have done us at least so much good, as to let us 
know, that, without a more extensive sale of that article, our 
East India revenues and acquisitions can have no certain con- 
nection with this country. It is through the American trade 5 
of tea that your East India conquests are to be prevented 
from crushing you with their burden. They are ponderous 
indeed ; and they must have that great country to lean upon, 
or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly that has 
lost you at once the benefit of the West and of the East. This 10 
folly has thrown open folding-doors to contraband ; and will 
be the means of giving the profits of the trade of your col- 
onies, to every nation but yourselves. Never did a people 
suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble. It must 
be given up. For on what principle does it stand? This 15 
famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a 
description of revenue not as yet known in all the compre- 
hensive (but too comprehensive!) vocabulary of finance — a 
preambulary tax. It is indeed a tax of sophistry, a tax of 
pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a 20 
tax for anything but benefit to the imposers, or satisfaction to 
the subject. 

Well ! but whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists 
to take the teas. You will force them ? Has seven years' strug- 
gle been yet able to force them? O but it seems "we are in 25 
the right. The tax is trifling — in effect it is rather an exonera- 
tion than an imposition; three-fourths of the duty formerly 
payable on teas exported to America is taken off ; the place 
of collection is only shifted ; instead of the retention of a shill- 
ing from the drawback here, it is threepence custom paid in 30 
America." All this, Sir, is very true. But this is the very folly 
and mischief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know 
that you have deliberately thrown away a large duty which you 



14 



EDMUND BURKE 



held secure and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of get- 
ting one three-fourths less, through every hazard, through 
certain litigation, and possibly through war. 

The manner of proceeding in the duties on paper and glass, 

5 imposed by the same act, was exactly in the same spirit. 
There are heavy excises on those articles when used in Eng- 
land. On export, these excises are drawn back. But instead 
of withholding the drawback, which might have been done, 
with ease, without charge, without possibility of smuggling; 

10 and instead of applying the money (money already in your 
hands) according to your pleasure, you began your operations 
in finance by flinging away your revenue ; you allowed the 
whole drawback on export, and then you charged the duty 
(which you had before discharged), payable in the colonies ; 

15 where it was certain the collection would devour it to the 
bone, if any revenue were ever suffered to be collected at all. 
One spirit pervades and animates the whole mass. 

Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, 
than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and 

20 give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, 
merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No man ever 
doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition 
of threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or 
will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irri- 

25 tated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The 
feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great 
Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden 
when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings. Would 
twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! 

30 but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it 
was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight 
of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight 
of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. 



AMERICAN TAXATION 15 

It is then, Sir, upon the principle of this measure, and noth- 
ing else, that we are at issue. It is a principle of political 
expediency. Your act of 1767 asserts, that it is expedient to 
raise a revenue in America; your act of 1769, which takes 
away that revenue, contradicts the act of 1767; and, by some- 5 
thing much stronger than words, asserts, that it is not expedi- 
ent. It is a reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn 
parliamentary declaration of the expediency of any object, for 
which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. And 
pray, Sir, let not this circumstance escape you ; it is very mate- 10 
rial ; that the preamble of this act, which we wish to repeal, 
is not declaratory of a right, as some gentlemen seem to argue 
it ; it is only a recital of the expediency of a certain exercise 
of a right supposed already to have been asserted ; an exercise 
you are now contending for by ways and means, which you 15 
confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly insufficient for 
their purpose. You are therefore at this moment in the awk- 
ward situation of fighting for a phantom ; a quiddity ; a thing 
that wants, not only a substance, but even a name ; for a thing, 
which fs neither abstract right, nor profitable enjoyment. 20 

They tell you, Sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know 
not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incum- 
brance to you ; for it has of late been ever at war with your 
interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the 
thing you contend for to be reason ; show it to be common 25 
sense ; show it to be the means of attaining some useful end ; 
and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please. 
But what dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurd- 
ity is more than ever I could discern. The honorable gentle- 
man has said well — indeed, in most of his general observations 30 
I agree with him — he says, that this subject does not stand as 
it did formerly. Oh, certainly not ! every hour you continue 
on this ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on you ; and 



l6 EDMUND BURKE 

therefore my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as 
quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yield- 
ing, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. 
But will you repeal the act, says the honorable gentleman, 

5 at this instant when America is in open resistance to your 
authority, and that you have just revived your system of taxa- 
tion? He thinks he has driven us into a corner. But thus pent 
up, I am content to meet him ; because I enter the lists sup- 
ported by my old authority, his new friends, the ministers 

10 themselves. The honorable gentleman remembers, that about 
five years ago as great disturbances as the present prevailed 
in America on account of the new taxes. The ministers 
represented these disturbances as treasonable ; and this 
House thought proper, on that representation, to make a 

15 famous address for a revival, and for a new application of a 
statute of Henry VIII. We besought the King, in that well- 
considered address, to inquire into treasons, and to bring the 
supposed traitors from America to Great Britain for trial. His 
Majesty was pleased graciously to promise a compliance with 

20 our request. All the attempts from this side of the House to 
resist these violences, and to bring about a repeal, were treated 
with the utmost scorn. An apprehension of the very conse- 
quences now stated by the honorable gentleman, was then 
given as a reason for shutting the door against all hope of 

25 such an alteration. And so strong was the spirit for supporting 
the new taxes, that the session concluded with the following 
remarkable declaration. After stating the vigorous measures 
which had been pursued, the speech from the throne pro- 
ceeds : 

30 You have assured me of your firm support in the prosecu- 
tion of them. Nothing, in my opinion, could be more likely 
to enable the well-disposed among my subjects in that part 
of the world, effectually to discourage and defeat the designs 



AMERICAN TAXATION 17 

of the factious and seditious, than the hearty concurrence of 
every branch of the legislature, in maintaining the execution 
of the laws in every part of my dominions. 

After this no man dreamt that a repeal under this ministry 
could possibly take place. The honorable gentleman knows 5 
as well as I, that the idea was utterly exploded by those who 
sway the House. This speech was made on the ninth day of 
May, 1769. Five days after this speech, that is, on the 13th 
of the same month, the public circular letter, a part of which 
I am. going to read to you, was written by Lord Hillsborough, 10 
Secretary of State for the colonies. After reciting the sub- 
stance of the King's speech, he goes on thus : 

" I can take upon me to assure you, notwithstanding insinu- 
ations to the contrary, from men with factious and seditious 
views, that his Majesty's present administration have at no 15 
time entertained a design to propose to Parliament to lay any 
further taxes upon America, for the purpose of RAISING A 
REVENUE ; and that it is at present their intention to pro- 
pose, the next session of Parliament, to take off the duties upon 
glass, paper, and colors, upon consideration of such duties 20 
having been laid contrary to the true principles of commerce. 

" These have always been, and still are, the sentiments of 
his Majesty's present servants ; and by which their conduct in 
respect to America has been governed. And his Majesty relies 
upon your prudence and fidelity for such an explanation of 25 
his measures, as may tend to remove the prejudices which 
have been excited by the misrepresentations of those who are 
enemies to the peace and prosperity of Great Britain and her 
colonies ; and to reestablish that mutual confidence and affec- 
tion, upon which the glory and safety of the British empire 30 
depend." 

Here, Sir, is a canonical book of ministerial scripture ; the 
general epistle to the Americans. What does the gentleman 



ig EDMUND BURKE 

say to it? Here a repeal is promised ; promised without con- 
dition ; and while your authority was actually resisted. I pass 
by the public promise of a peer relative to the repeal of taxes 
by this House. I pass by the use of the King's name in a 

5 matter of supply, that sacred and reserved right of the Com- 
mons. I conceal the ridiculous figure of Parliament, hurling 
its thunders at the gigantic rebellion of America; and then 
five days after, prostrate at the feet of those assemblies we 
affected to despise ; begging them, by the intervention of our 

10 ministerial sureties, to receive our submission; and heartily 
promising amendment. These might have been serious matters 
formerly ; but we are grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, 
therefore, from the constitutional consideration to the mere 
policy, does not this letter imply, that the idea of taxing 

[5 America for the purpose of revenue is an abominable project; 
when the ministry suppose none but factious men, and with 
seditious views, could charge them with it? does not this let- 
ter adopt and sanctify the American distinction of taxing 
for a revenue ? does it not formally reject all future taxation 

20 on that principle? does it not state the ministerial rejection of 
such principle of taxation, not as the occasional, but the con- 
stant opinion of the King's servants? does it not say (I care 
not how consistently), but does it not say, that their conduct 
with regard to America has been a/ways governed by this 

25 policy? It goes a great deal further. These excellent and 
trusty servants of the King, justly fearful lest they themselves 
should have lost all credit with the world, bring out the image 
of their gracious sovereign from the inmost and most sacred 
shrine, and they pawn him as a security for their promises — 

30 "His Majesty relies on your prudence and fidelity for such an 
explanation of his measures." These sentiments of the min- 
ister, and these measures of his Majesty, can only relate to 
the principle and practice of taxing for a revenue ; and 



AMERICAN TAXATION 19 

accordingly Lord Botetourt, stating it as such, did, with great 
propriety, and in the exact spirit of his instructions, endeavor 
to remove the fears of the Virginian assembly, lest the senti- 
ments, which it seems (unknown to the world) had always 
been those of the ministers, and by which their conduct in 5 
respect to America had been governed, should by some possible 
revolution, favorable to wicked American taxers, be hereafter 
counteracted. He addresses them in this manner : 

It may possibly be objected, that, as his Majesty's present 
administration are not immortal, their successors may be inclined 10 
to attempt to undo what the present ministers shall have 
attempted to perform ; and to that objection I can give but 
this answer : that it is my firm opinion, that the plan I have 
stated to you will certainly take place, and that it will never 
be departed from ; and so determined am I for ever to abide 15 
by it, that I will be content to be declared infamous, if I do 
not, to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, and 
upon all occasions, exert every power with which I either am, 
or ever shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and main- 
tain for the continent of America that satisfaction which I have 20 
been authorized to promise this day, by the confidential 'servants 
of our gracious sovereign, who to my certain knowledge rates 
his honor so high, that he would rather part with his crown, 
than preserve it by deceit. 

A glorious and true character ! which (since we suffer his 25 
ministers with impunity to answer for his ideas of taxation) we 
ought to make it our business to enable his Majesty to preserve 
in all its lustre. Let him have character, since ours is no more ! 
Let some part of government be kept in respect ! 

This epistle was not the letter of Lord Hillsborough solely ; 30 
though he held the official pen. It was the letter of the noble 
lord upon the floor, and of all the King's then ministers, who 
(with I think the exception of two only) are his ministers at 



20 EDMUND BURKE 

this hour. The very first news that a British Parliament heard 
of what it was to do with the duties which it had given and 
granted to the King, was by the publication of the votes of 
American assemblies. It was in America that your resolutions 
5 were pre-declared. It was from thence that we knew to a cer- 
tainty, how much exactly, and not a scruple more nor less, we 
were to repeal. We were unworthy to be let into the secret of 
our own conduct. The assemblies had confidential communi- 
cations from his Majesty's confidential servants. We were noth- 

10 ing but instruments. Do you, after this, wonder that you have 
no weight and no respect in the colonies? After this, are you 
surprised, that Parliament is every day and everywhere losing 
(I feel it with sorrow, I utter it with reluctance) that reveren- 
tial affection, which so endearing a name of authority ought 

15 ever to carry with it; that you are obeyed solely from respect 
to the bayonet ; and that this House, the ground and pillar of 
freedom, is itself held up only by the treacherous underpinning 
and clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power? 

If this dignity, which is to stand in the place of just policy 

20 and common sense, had been consulted, there was a time for 
preserving it, and for reconciling it with any concession. If in 
the session of 1768, that session of idle terror and empty men- 
aces, you had, as you were often pressed to do, repealed these 
taxes ; then your strong operations would have come justified 

25 and enforced, in case your concessions had been returned by 
outrages. But, preposterously, you began with violence ; and 
before terrors could have any effect, either good or bad, your 
ministers immediately begged pardon, and promised that repeal 
to the obstinate Americans which they had refused in an easy, 

30 good-natured, complying British Parliament. The assemblies 
which had been publicly and avowedly dissolved for their con- 
tumacy, are called together to receive your submission. Your 
ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants here ; and 



AMERICAN TAXATION 21 

then went mumping with a sore leg in America, canting and 
whining, and complaining of faction, which represented them 
as friends to a revenue from the colonies. I hope nobody in 
this House will hereafter have the impudence to defend 
American taxes in the name of ministry. The moment they 5 
do, with this letter of attorney in my hand, I will tell them, in 
the authorized terms, they are wretches, " with factious and 
seditious views ; enemies to the peace and prosperity of the 
mother country and the colonies," and subverters " of the 
mutual affection and confidence on which the glory and safety 10 
of the British empire depend." 

After this letter, the question is no more on propriety 
or dignity. They are gone already. The faith of your sovereign 
is pledged for the political principle. The general declaration 
in the letter goes to the whole of it. You must therefore 15 
either abandon the scheme of taxing ; or you must send the 
ministers tarred and feathered to America, who dared to hold 
out the royal faith for a renunciation of all taxes for revenue. 
Them you must punish, or this faith you must preserve. The 
preservation of this faith is of more consequence than the duties 20 
on red lead, or white lead, or on broken glass, or atlas-ordi- 
nary, or detni-fine, or blue royal, or bastard, or fooVs-cap, which 
you have given up ; or the threepence on tea which you retained. 
The letter went stampt with the public authority of this king- 
dom. The instructions for the colony government go under no 25 
other sanction ; and America cannot believe, and will not obey 
you, if you do not preserve this channel of communication sacred. 
You are now punishing the colonies for acting on distinctions, 
held out by that very ministry which is here shining in riches, 
in favor, and in power ; and urging the punishment of the very 30 
offense to which they had themselves been the tempters. 

Sir, if reasons respecting simply your own commerce, which 
is your own convenience, were the sole grounds of the repeal 



EDMUND BURKE 

of the five duties ; why does Lord Hillsborough, in disclaim- 
ing in the name of the King and ministry their ever having 
had an intent to tax for revenue, mention it as the means " of 
reestablishing the confidence and affection of the colonies?" 

5 Is it a way of soothing others, to assure them that you will 
take good care of yourself? The medium, the only medium, 
for regaining their affection and confidence is, that you will 
take off something oppressive to their minds. Sir, the letter 
strongly enforces that idea ; for though the repeal of the taxes 

10 is promised on commercial principles, yet the means of coun- 
teracting " the insinuations of men with factious and seditious 
views," is by a disclaimer of the intention of taxing for revenue, 
as a constant invariable sentiment and rule of conduct in the 
government of America. 

15 I remember that the noble lord on the floor, not in a former 
debate to be sure (it would be disorderly to refer to it, I 
suppose I read it somewhere), but the noble lord was pleased 
to say, that he did not conceive how it could enter into the 
head of man to impose such taxes as those of 1767; I mean 

20 those taxes which he voted for imposing, and voted for 
repealing; as being taxes, contrary to all the principles of 
commerce, laid on British manufactures. 

I dare say the noble lord is perfectly well read, because the 
duty of his particular office requires he should be so, in all 

25 our revenue laws ; and in the policy which is to be collected 
out of them. Now, Sir, when he had read this act of Ameri- 
can revenue, and a little recovered from his astonishment, I 
suppose he made one step retrograde (it is but one) and 
looked at the act which stands just before in the statute-book. 

30 The American revenue act is the forty-fifth chapter; the 
other to which I refer is the forty-fourth of the same session. 
These two acts arc both to the same purpose; both revenue 
acts ; both taxing out of the kingdom ; and both taxing British 



AMERICAN TAXATION 23 

manufactures exported. As the 45th is an act for raising a 
revenue in America, the 44th is an act for raising a revenue 
in the Isle of Man. The two acts perfectly agree in all 
respects, except one. In the act for taxing the Isle of Man, 
the noble lord will find (not, as in the American act, four or 5 
five articles) but almost the whole body of British manufactures, 
taxed from two and a half to fifteen per cent., and some articles, 
such as that of spirits, a great deal higher. You did not think 
it uncommercial to tax the whole mass of your manufactures, 
and, let me add, your agriculture too ; for, I now recollect, 10 
British corn is there also taxed up to ten per cent., and this too 
in the very headquarters, the very citadel of smuggling, the 
Isle of Man. Now will the noble lord condescend to tell me 
why he repealed the taxes on your manufactures sent out to 
America, and not the taxes on the manufactures exported to 15 
the Isle of Man? The principle was exactly the same, the 
objects charged infinitely more extensive, the duties without 
comparison higher. Why? Why, notwithstanding all his child- 
ish pretexts, because the taxes were quietly submitted to in the 
Isle of Man; and because they raised a flame in America. 20 
Your reasons were political, not commercial. The repeal was 
made, as Lord Hillsborough's letter well expresses it, to regain 
" the confidence and affection of the colonies, on which the 
glory and safety of the British empire depend." A wise and 
just motive surely, if ever there was such. But the mischief 25 
and dishonor is, that you have not done what you had given 
the colonies just cause to expect, when your ministers dis- 
claimed the idea of taxes for a revenue. There is nothing 
simple, nothing manly, nothing ingenuous, open, decisive, or 
steady, in the proceeding, with regard either to the continu- 30 
ance or the repeal of the taxes. The whole has an air of little- 
ness and fraud. The article of tea is slurred over in the 
circular letter, as it were by accident — nothing is said of a 



24 EDMUND BURKE 

resolution either to keep that tax, or to give it up. There is 
do fail dealing in any part of the transaction. 

If you mean to follow your true motive and your public faith, 
give up your tax on tea for raising a revenue, the principle of 
5 which has, in effect, been disclaimed in your name ; and which 
produces you no advantage; no, not a penny. Or, if you 
choose to go on with a poor pretense instead of a solid reason, 
and will still adhere to your cant of commerce, you have ten 
thousand times more strong commercial reasons for giving up 

10 this duty on tea, than for abandoning the five others that you 
have already renounced. 

The American consumption of teas is annually, I believe, 
worth ^300,000 at the least farthing. If you urge the Ameri- 
can violence as a justification of your perseverance in enforcing 

1 5 this tax, you know that you can never answer this plain ques- 
tion — Why did you repeal the others given in the same act, 
whilst the very same violence subsisted? — But you did not 
find the violence cease upon that concession. — No ! because 
the concession was far short of satisfying the principle which 

20 Lord Hillsborough had abjured ; or even the pretense on which 
the repeal of the other taxes was announced : and because, by 
enabling the East India Company to open a shop for defeating 
the American resolution not to pay that specific tax, you mani- 
festly showed a hankering after the principle of the act which 

25 you formerly had renounced. Whatever road you take leads 
to a compliance with this motion. It opens to you at the end 
of every visto. Your commerce, your policy, your promises, 
your reasons, your pretenses, your consistency, your inconsist- 
ency — all jointly oblige you to this repeal. 

30 But still it sticks in our throats, if we go so far, the 
Americans will go farther. — We do not know that. We ought, 
from experience, rather to presume the contrary. Do we not 
know for certain, that the Americans are going on as fast as 



AMERICAN TAXATION 25 

possible, whilst we refuse to gratify them? Can they do more, 
or can they do worse, if we yield this point? I think this con- 
cession will rather fix a turnpike to prevent their further 
progress. It is impossible to answer for bodies of men. But I 
am sure the natural effect of fidelity, clemency, kindness in 5 
governors, is peace, good-will, order, and esteem, on the part 
of the governed. I would certainly, at least, give these fair 
principles a fair trial ; which, since the making of this act to 
this hour, they never have had. 

Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought 10 
necessary upon the narrow part of the subject, I have given 
him, I hope, a satisfactory answer. He next presses me by a 
variety of direct challenges and oblique reflections to say some- 
thing on the historical part. I shall therefore, Sir, open myself 
fully on that important and delicate subject; not for the sake 15 
of telling you a long story (which, I know, Mr. Speaker, you 
are not particularly fond of), but for the sake of the weighty 
instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily result from it. 
It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so serious a matter 
requires. 

Permit me then, Sir, to lead your attention very far back ; 
back to the Act of Navigation ; the corner-stone of the policy 
of this country with regard to its colonies. Sir, that policy was, 
from the beginning, purely commercial ; and the commercial 
system was wholly restrictive. It was the system of a monopoly. 25 
No trade was let loose from that constraint, but merely to 
enable the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your 
trade, you could not take ; or to enable them to dispose of 
such articles as we forced upon them, and for which, without 
some degree of liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your 30 
specific and detailed enumerations: hence the innumerable 
checks and counterchecks : hence that infinite variety of paper 
chains by which you bind together this complicated system of 



26 EDMUND BURKE 

the colonies. This principle of commercial monopoly runs 
through no less than twenty-nine acts of Parliament, from the 
year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764. 

In all those acts the system of commerce is established, as 
5 that from whence alone you proposed to make the colonies 
contribute (I mean directly and by the operation of your super- 
intending legislative power) to the strength of the empire. I 
venture to say, that during that whole period, a parliamentary 
revenue from thence was never once in contemplation. Accord- 

10 ingly, in all the number of laws passed with regard to the planta- 
tions, the words which distinguish revenue laws, specifically as 
such, were, I think, premeditately avoided. I do not say, Sir, 
that a form of words alters the nature of the law, or abridges 
the power of the lawgiver. It certainly does not. However, 

15 titles and formal preambles are not always idle words; and 
the lawyers frequently argue from them. I state these facts to 
show, not what was your right, but what has been your settled 
policy. Our revenue laws have usually a title, purporting their 
being grants, and the words give and grant usually precede 

20 the enacting parts. Although duties were imposed on America 
in acts of King Charles the Second, and in acts of King 
William, no one title of giving " an aid to his Majesty," or any 
other of the usual titles to revenue acts, was to be found in 
any of them till 1764 ; nor were the words " give and grant" 

25 in any preamble until the 6th of George the Second. How- 
ever the title of this act of George the Second, notwithstand- 
ing the words of donation, considers it merely as a regulation 
of trade, " An act for the better securing of the trade of his 
Majesty's sugar colonies in America." This act was made on 

30 a compromise of all, and at the express desire of a part, of the 
colonies themselves. It was therefore in some measure with 
their consent ; and having a title directly purporting only a com- 
mercial regulation, and being in truth nothing more, the words 



AMERICAN TAXATION 27 

were passed by, at a time when no jealousy was entertained, 
and things were little scrutinized. Even Governor Bernard, in 
his second printed letter, dated in 1763, gives it as his opinion, 
that " it was an act of prohibition, not of revenue." This is 
certainly true ; that no act avowedly for the purpose of revenue, 5 
and with the ordinary title and recital taken together, is found 
in the statute-book until the year I have mentioned ; that is the 
year 1764. All before this period stood on commercial regula- 
tion and restraint. The scheme of a colony revenue by British 
authority appeared therefore to the Americans in the light of 10 
a great innovation ; the words of Governor Bernard's ninth 
letter, written in Nov. 1765, state this idea very strongly; "it 
must," says he, "have been supposed, such a?i innovation as a 
parliamentary taxation, would cause a great a/arm, and meet 
with much opposition in most parts of America ; it was quite 1 5 
new to the people, and had no visible bounds set to it." After 
stating the weakness of government there, he says, " was this a 
time to introduce so great a novelty as a parliamentary inland 
taxation in America?" Whatever the right might have been, 
this mode of using it was absolutely new in policy and practice. 20 

Sir, they who are friends to the schemes of American revenue 
say, that the commercial restraint is full as hard a law for 
America to live under. I think so too. I think it, if uncom- 
pensated, to be a condition of as rigorous servitude as men can 
be subject to. But America bore it from the fundamental Act 25 
of Navigation until 1764. — Why? Because men do bear the 
inevitable constitution of their original nature with all its 
infirmities. The Act of Navigation attended the colonies from 
their infancy, grew with their growth, and strengthened with 
their strength. They were confirmed in obedience to it, even 30 
more by usage than by law. They scarcely had remembered a 
time when they were not subject to such restraint. Besides, 
they were indemnified for it by a pecuniary compensation. 



28 EDMUND BURKE 

Their monopolist happened to be one of the richest men in the 
world. By his immense capital (primarily employed, not for 
their benefit, but his own), they were enabled to proceed with 
their fisheries, their agriculture, their ship-building (and their 
5 trade too within the limits), in such a manner as got far the 
start of the slow languid operations of unassisted nature. This 
capital was a hot-bed to them. Nothing in the history of man- 
kind is like their progress. For my part, I never cast an eye 
on their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and com- 

io modious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown 
to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a 
train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many cen- 
turies, than the colonies of yesterday ; than a set of miserable 
outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out, on 

15 the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness three 
thousand miles from all civilized intercourse. 

All this was done by England, whilst England pursued trade, 
and forgot revenue. You not only acquired commerce, but 
you actually created the very objects of trade in America ; and 

20 by that creation you raised the trade of this kingdom at least 
fourfold. America had the compensation of your capital, 
which made her bear her servitude. She had another com- 
pensation, which you are now going to take away from her. 
She had, except the commercial restraint, every characteristic 

25 mark of a free people in all her internal concerns. She had 
the image of the British constitution. She had the substance. 
She was taxed by her own representatives. She chose most of 
her own magistrates. She paid them all. She had in effect 
the sole disposal of her own internal government. This whole 

30 state of commercial servitude and civil liberty, taken together, 
is certainly not perfect freedom ; but comparing it with the 
ordinary circumstances of human nature, it was a happy and a 
liberal condition. 



AMERICAN TAXATION 29 

I know, Sir, that great and not unsuccessful pains have been 
taken to inflame our minds by an outcry, in this House and 
out of it, that in America the Act of Navigation neither is, or 
ever was, obeyed. But if you take the colonies through, I 
affirm, that its authority never was disputed ; that it was 5 
nowhere disputed for any length of time; and, on the whole, 
that it was well observed. Wherever the act pressed hard, 
many individuals indeed evaded it. This is nothing. These 
scattered individuals never denied the law, and never obeyed 
it. Just as it happens whenever the laws of trade, whenever 10 
the laws of revenue, press hard upon the people in England ; 
in that case all your shores are full of contraband. Your right 
to give a monopoly to the East India Company, your right to 
lay immense duties on French brandy, are not disputed in 
England. You do not make this charge on any man. But you 15 
know that there is not a creek from Pentland Frith to the Isle 
of Wight, in which they do not smuggle immense quantities of 
teas, East India goods, and brandies. I take it for granted, 
that the authority of Governor Bernard in this point is indis- 
putable. Speaking of these laws, as they regarded that part of 20 
America now in so unhappy a condition, he says, " I believe 
they are nowhere better supported than in this province ; I 
do not pretend that it is entirely free from a breach of these 
laws ; but that such a breach, if discovered, is justly punished." 
What more can you say of the obedience to any laws in any 25 
country ? An obedience to these laws formed the acknowledg- 
ment, instituted by yourselves, for your superiority ; and was 
the payment you originally imposed for your protection. 

Whether you were right or wrong in establishing the colonies 
on the principles of commercial monopoly, rather than on that 30 
of revenue, is at this day a problem of mere speculation. You 
cannot have both by the same authority. To join together the 
restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly, with 



30 



EDMUND BURKE 



an universal internal and external taxation, is an unnatural 
union ; perfect uncompensated slavery. You have long since 
decided for yourself and them; and you and they have pros- 
pered exceedingly under that decision. 
5 This nation, Sir, never thought of departing from that choice 
until the period immediately on the close of the last war. Then 
a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have 
been adopted. I saw, or I thought I saw, several symptoms of 
a great change, whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while before 

10 I had the honor of a seat in this House. At that period the 
necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty 
new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this 
House. This scheme was adopted with very general applause 
from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in 

15 America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of 
the world was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over. 
When this huge increase of military establishment was resolved 
on, a revenue was to be found to support so great a burden. 
Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the 

20 great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have 
entered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so 
expensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were 
to continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held 
out to them ; and in particular, I well remember, that Mr. 

25 Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle 
them, by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to 
be raised in America. 

I [ere began to dawn the first glimmerings of this new colony 
system. It appeared more distinctly afterwards, when it was 

30 devolved upon a person to whom, on other accounts, this 
country owes very great obligations. I do believe, that he 
had a very serious desire to benefit the public. But with no 
small study of the detail, he did not seem to have his view, at 



AMERICAN TAXATION 3 I 

least equally, carried to the total circuit of our affairs. He 
generally considered his objects in lights that were rather 
too detached. Whether the business of an American revenue 
was imposed upon him altogether ; whether it was entirely the 
result of his own speculation ; or, what is more probable, that 5 
his own ideas rather coincided with the instructions he had re- 
ceived; certain it is, that, with the best intentions in the world, 
he first brought this fatal scheme into form, and established it 
by act of Parliament. 

No man can believe, that at this time of day I mean to 10 
lean on the venerable memory of a great man, whose loss we 
deplore in common. Our little party differences have been 
long ago composed ; and I have acted more with him, and cer- 
tainly with more pleasure with him, than ever I acted against 
him. Undoubtedly Mr. Grenville was a first-rate figure in 15 
this country. With a masculine understanding, and a stout 
and resolute heart, he had an application undissipated and 
unwearied. He took public business, not as a duty which he 
was to fulfil, but as a pleasure he was to enjoy ; and he seemed 
to have no delight out of this House, except in such things as 20 
some way related to the business that was to be done within 
it. If he was ambitious, I will say this for him, his ambition 
was of a noble and generous strain. It was to raise himself, 
not by the low, pimping politics of a court, but to win his way 
to power, through the laborious gradations of public service ; 25 
and to secure to himself a well-earned rank in Parliament, by 
a thorough knowledge of its constitution, and a perfect practice 
in all its business. 

Sir, if such a man fell into errors, it must ' " ->m defects 
not intrinsical ; they must be rather F' .rticular 30 

habits of his life ; which, though tJ" 'ound- 

work of character, yet tinge it -as 

bred in a profession. He was 1 



32 EDMUND BURKE 

opinion, one of the first and noblest of human sciences; a 
science which does more to quicken and invigorate the under- 
standing, than all the other kinds of learning put together; 
but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open 
5 and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion. 
Passing from that study he did not go very largely into the 
world ; but plunged into business ; I mean into the business 
of office ; and the limited and fixed methods and forms estab- 
lished there. Much knowledge is to be had undoubtedly in 

10 that line; and there is no knowledge which is not valuable. 
But it may be truly said, that men too much conversant in 
office are rarely minds of remarkable enlargement. Their 
habits of office are apt to give them a turn to think the sub- 
stance of business not to be much more important than the 

15 forms in which it is conducted. These forms are adapted to 
ordinary occasions ; and therefore persons who are nurtured in 
office do admirably well as long as things go on in their com- 
mon order ; but when the high roads are broken up, and the 
waters out, when a new and troubled scene is opened, and 

20 the file affords no precedent, then it is that a greater knowledge 
of mankind, and a far more extensive comprehension of things, 
is requisite, than ever office gave, or than office can ever give. 
Mr. Grenville thought better of the wisdom and power of 
human legislation than in truth it deserves. He conceived, 

25 and many conceived along with him, that the flourishing trade 
of this country was greatly owing to law and institution, and 
not quite so much to liberty; for but too many are apt to 
believe regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. 
Among r^ ns, that which stood first in reputation was his 

3° idol. T if Navigation. He has often professed 

it to ' r that act is, I readily admit, in many 

1 it 1 do say, that if the act be 

h of its principle, and is not 



AMERICAN TAXATION 33 

changed and modified according to the change of times and 
the fluctuation of circumstances, it must do great mischief, and 
frequently even defeat its own purpose. 

After the war, and in the last years of it, the trade of 
America had increased far beyond the speculations of the 5 
most sanguine imagination. It swelled out on every side. 
It filled all its proper channels to the brim. It overflowed 
with a rich redundance, and breaking its banks on the right 
and on the left, it spread out upon some places where it was 
indeed improper, upon others where it was only irregular. It 10 
is the nature of all greatness not to be exact ; and great trade 
will always be attended with considerable abuses. The con- 
traband will always keep pace in some measure with the fair 
trade. It should stand as a fundamental maxim, that no 
vulgar precaution ought to be employed in the cure of evils, 15 
which are closely connected with the cause of our prosperity. 
Perhaps this great person turned his eye somewhat less than 
was just, towards the incredible increase of the fair trade ; and 
looked with something of too exquisite a jealousy towards the 
contraband. He certainly felt a singular degree of anxiety on 20 
the subject; and even began to act from that passion earlier 
than is commonly imagined. For whilst he was First Lord of 
the Admiralty, though not strictly called upon in his official 
line, he presented a very strong memorial to the Lords of the 
Treasury (my Lord Bute was then at the head of the board), 25 
heavily complaining of the growth of the illicit commerce in 
America. Some mischief happened even at that time from 
this over-earnest zeal. Much greater happened afterwards, 
when it operated with greater power in the highest depart- 
ment of the finances. The bonds of the Act of Navigation 30 
were straitened so much, that America was on the point of 
having no trade, either contraband' or ; legitimate. They 
found, under the construction, andLi execution, then used ? the^ 



34 EDMUND BURKE 

act do longer tying but actually strangling them. All this 
coming with new enumerations of commodities; with regula- 
tions which in a manner put a stop to the mutual coasting 
intercourse of the colonies; with the appointment of courts 
5 of admiralty under various improper circumstances; with a 
sudden extinction of the paper currencies; with a compul- 
sory provision for the quartering of soldiers ; the people of 
America thought themselves proceeded against as delinquents, 
or, at best, as people under suspicion of delinquency ; and 

io in such a manner, as they imagined, their recent services in 
the war did not at all merit. Any of these innumerable 
regulations, perhaps, would not have alarmed alone ; some 
might be thought reasonable; the multitude struck them 
with terror. 

15 But the grand manoeuvre in that business of new regulating 
the colonies, was the 15th act of the fourth of George III; 
which, besides containing several of the matters to which 
I have just alluded, opened a new principle : and here prop- 
erly began the second period of the policy of this country 

20 with regard to the colonies ; by which the scheme of a regu- 
lar plantation parliamentary revenue was adopted in theory, 
and settled in practice. A revenue not substituted in the 
place of, but superadded to, a monopoly; which monopoly 
was enforced at the same time with additional strictness, and 

25 the execution put into military hands. 

'This act, Sir, had for the first time the title of "granting 
duties in the colonies and plantations of America;" and for 
the first time it was asserted in the preamble, " that it was/»j/ 
and necessary that a revenue should be raised there." Then 

30 came the technical words of " giving and granting ; " and thus 
a complete American revenue act was made in all the forms, 
and with a full avowal of the right, equity, policy, and even 
Decessity of taxing the colonies, without any formal consent 



AMERICAN TAXATION 



35 



of theirs. There are contained also in the preamble to that 
act these very remarkable words — the Commons, etc. — "being 
desirous to make some provision in the present session of Par- 
liament towards raising the said revenue." By these words 
it appeared to the colonies, that this act was but a beginning 5 
of sorrows ; that every session was to produce something of 
the same kind ; that we were to go on from day to day, in 
charging them with such taxes as we pleased, for such a mili- 
tary force as we should think proper. Had this plan been pur- 
sued, it was evident that the provincial assemblies, in which 10 
the Americans felt all their portion of importance, and beheld 
their sole image of freedom, were ipso facto annihilated. This 
ill prospect before them seemed to be boundless in extent, 
and endless in duration. Sir, they were not mistaken. The 
ministry valued themselves when this act passed, and when 15 
they gave notice of the Stamp Act, that both of the duties 
came very short of their ideas of American taxation. Great 
was the applause of this measure here. In England we cried 
out for new taxes on America, whilst they cried out that they 
were nearly crushed with those which the war and their own 20 
grants had brought upon them. 

Sir, it has been said in the debate, that when the first 
American revenue act (the act in 1764, imposing the port 
duties) passed, the Americans did not object to the principle. 
It is true they touched it but very tenderly. It was not a 25 
direct attack. They were, it is true, as yet novices ; as yet 
unaccustomed to direct attacks upon any of the rights of Par- 
liament. The duties were port duties, like those they had been 
accustomed to bear; with this difference, that the title was 
not the same, the preamble not the same, and the spirit 30 
altogether unlike. But of what service is this observation to 
the cause of those that make it? It is a full refutation of the 
pretense for their present cruelty to America; for it shows, ' 



36 EDMUND BURKE 

out of their own mouths, that our colonies were backward to 
enter into the present vexatious and ruinous controversy. 

There is also another circulation abroad, (spread with a 
malignant intention, which I cannot attribute to those who 
5 say the same thing in this House) that Mr. Grenville gave 
the colony agents an option for their assemblies to tax them- 
selves, which they had refused. I find that much stress is laid 
on this, as a fact. However, it happens neither to be true nor 
possible. I will observe first, that Mr. Grenville never thought 

i o fit to make this apology for himself in the innumerable debates 
that were had upon the subject. He might have proposed to 
the colony agents, that they should agree in some mode of 
taxation as the ground of an act of Parliament. But he never 
could have proposed that they should tax themselves on requi- 

15 sition, which is the assertion of the day. Indeed, Mr. Grenville 
well knew, that the colony agents could have no general powers 
to consent to it ; and they had no time to consult their assem- 
blies for particular powers, before he passed his first revenue 
act. If you compare dates, you will find it impossible. Bur- 

20 dened as the agents knew the colonies were at that time, they 
could not give the least hope of such grants. His own favorite 
governor was of opinion that the Americans were not then 
taxable objects. 

" Xor was the time less favorable to the equity of such a taxa- 
25 tion. I don't mean to dispute the reasonableness of America 
contributing to the charges of Great Britain when she is able ; 
nor, I believe, would the Americans themselves have disputed 
it, at a proper time and season. But it should be considered, 
that the American governments themselves have, in the prose- 
30 cution of the late war, contracted very large debts ; which it 
will take some years to pay off, and in the mean time occasion 
very burdensome taxes for that purpose only. For instance, this 
government, which is as much beforehand as any, raises every 



AMERICAN TAXATION 37 

year ^37,500 sterling for sinking their debt, and must continue 
it for four years longer at least before it will be clear." 

These are the words of Governor Bernard's letter to a mem- 
ber of the old ministry, and which he has since printed. Mr. 
Grenville could not have made this proposition to the agents, 5 
for another reason. He was of opinion, which he has declared 
in this House an hundred times, that the colonies could not 
legally grant any revenue to the crown ; and that infinite 
mischiefs would be the consequence of such a power. When 
Mr. Grenville had passed the first revenue act, and in the 10 
same session had made this House come to a resolution for 
laying a stamp duty on America, between that time and the 
passing the Stamp Act into a law, he told a considerable and 
most respectable merchant, a member of this House, whom I 
am truly sorry I do not now see in his place, when he repre- 15 
sented against this proceeding, that if the stamp duty was 
disliked, he was willing to exchange it for any other equally 
productive ; but that, if he objected to the Americans being 
taxed by Parliament, he might save himself the trouble of the 
discussion, as he was determined on the measure. This is the 20 
fact, and, if you please, I will mention a very unquestionable 
authority for it. 

Thus, Sir, I have disposed of this falsehood. But falsehood 
has a perennial spring. It is said, that no conjecture could be 
made of the dislike of the colonies to the principle. This is as 25 
untrue as the other. After the resolution of the House, and 
before the passing of the Stamp Act, the colonies of Massa- 
chuset's Bay and New York did send remonstrances, objecting 
to this mode of parliamentary taxation. What was the conse- 
quence ? They were suppressed ; they were put under the 30 
table ; notwithstanding an order of council to the contrary, by 
the ministry which composed the very council that had made 
the order; and thus the House proceeded to its business of 



38 EDMUND BURKE 

taxing, without the least regular knowledge of the objections 
which were made to it. But to give that House its due, it was 
not over desirous to receive information, or to hear remon- 
strance. On the 15 th of February, 1765, whilst the Stamp 
5 Act was under deliberation, they refused with scorn even so 
much as to receive four petitions presented from so respectable 
colonies as Connecticut, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Carolina ; 
besides one from the traders of Jamaica. As to the colonies, 
they had no alternative left to them, but to disobey ; or to pay 

10 the taxes imposed by that Parliament which was not suffered, 
or did not suffer itself, even to hear them remonstrate upon 
the subject. 

This was the state of the colonies before his Majesty thought 
lit to change his ministers. It stands upon no authority of mine. 

15 It is proved by uncontrovertible records. The honorable gentle- 
man has desired some of us to lay our hands upon our hearts, 
and answer to his queries upon the historical part of this con- 
sideration ; and by his manner (as well as my eyes could discern 
it) he seemed to address himself to me. 

20 Sir, I will answer him as clearly as I am able, and with 
great openness ; I have nothing to conceal. In the year sixty- 
five, being in a very private station, far enough from any line 
of business, and not having the honor of a seat in this House, 
it was my fortune, unknowing and unknown to the then min- 

25 istry, by the intervention of a common friend, to become 
connected with a very noble person, and at the head of the 
treasury department. It was indeed in a situation of little 
rank and no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity of my 
talents and pretensions. But a situation near enough to enable 

30 me to see, as well as others, what was going on j and I did see 
in that noble person such sound principles, such an enlarge- 
ment of mind, such clear and sagacious sense, and such 
unshaken fortitude, as have bound me, as well as others much 



AMERICAN TAXATION 39 

better than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that 
time forward. Sir, Lord Rockingham very early in that summer 
received a strong representation from many weighty English 
merchants and manufacturers, from governors of provinces 
and commanders of men of war, against almost the whole of 5 
the American commercial regulations : and particularly with 
regard to the total ruin which was threatened to the Spanish 
trade. I believe, Sir, the noble lord soon saw his way in this 
business. But he did not rashly determine against acts which 
it might be supposed were the result of much deliberation. 10 
However, Sir, he scarcely began to open the ground, when the 
whole veteran body of office took the alarm. A violent outcry 
of all (except those who knew and felt the mischief) was raised 
against any alteration. On one hand, his attempt was a direct 
violation of treaties and public law. On the other, the Act of 15 
Navigation and all the corps of trade laws were drawn up in 
array against it. 

The first step the noble lord took, was to have the opinion 
of his excellent, learned, and ever lamented friend the late 
Mr. Yorke, then Attorney General, on the point of law. When 20 
he knew that formally and officially, which in substance he had 
known before, he immediately dispatched orders to redress the 
grievance. But I will say it for the then minister, he is of that 
constitution of mind, that I know he would have issued, on the 
same critical occasion, the very same orders, if the acts of trade 25 
had been, as they were not, directly against him ; and would 
have cheerfully submitted to the equity of Parliament for his 
indemnity. 

On the conclusion of this business of the Spanish trade, the 
news of the troubles, on account of the Stamp Act, arrived in 30 
England. It was not until the end of October that these 
accounts were received. No sooner had the sound of that 
mighty tempest reached us in England, than the whole of the 



40 



EDMUND BURKE 



then opposition, instead of feeling humbled by the unhappy 
issue of their measures, seemed to be infinitely elated, and 
cried out, that the ministry, from envy to the glory of their 
predecessors, were prepared to repeal the Stamp Act. Near 
5 nine years after, the honorable gentleman takes quite opposite 
ground, and now challenges me to put my hand to my heart, 
and say, whether the ministry had resolved on the repeal till 
a considerable time after the meeting of Parliament. Though 
I do not very well know what the honorable gentleman wishes 

10 to infer from the admission, or from the denial, of this fact, on 
which he so earnestly adjures me ; I do put my hand on my 
heart, and assure him, that they did not come to a resolution 
directly to repeal. They weighed this matter as its difficulty 
and importance required. They considered maturely among 

15 themselves. They consulted with all who could give advice or 
information. It was not determined until a little before the 
meeting of Parliament ; but it was determined, and the main 
lines of their own plan marked out, before that meeting. Two 
questions arose (I hope I am not going into a narrative 

20 troublesome to the House) 

[A cry of, " Go on, go on."] 

The first of the two considerations was, whether the repeal 
should be total, or whether only partial ; taking out everything 
burdensome and productive, and reserving only an empty 

25 acknowledgment, such as a stamp on cards or dice. The 
other question was, on what principle the act should be 
repealed? On this head also two principles were started. 
One, that the legislative rights of this country, with regard to 
America, were not entire, but had certain restrictions and 

30 limitations. The other principle was, that taxes of this kind 
were contrary to the fundamental principles of commerce on 
which the colonies were founded ; and contrary to every idea 
of political equity ; by which equity we are bound, as much as 



AMERICAN TAXATION 41 

possible to extend the spirit and benefit of the British consti- 
tution to every part of the British dominions. The option, 
both of the measure, and of the principle of repeal, was made 
before the session ; and I wonder how any one can read the 
King's speech at the opening of that session, without seeing in 5 
that speech both the repeal and the Declaratory Act very 
sufficiently crayoned out. Those who cannot see this can see 
nothing. 

Surely the honorable gentleman will not think that a 
great deal less time than was then employed, ought to have 10 
been spent in deliberation, when he considers that the news 
of the troubles did not arrive till towards the end of Octo- 
ber. The Parliament sat to fill the vacancies on the 14th day 
of December, and on business the 14th of the following 
January. 15 

Sir, a partial repeal, or, as the bon to?i of the court then was, 
a modification, would have satisfied a timid, unsystematic, pro- 
crastinating ministry, as such a measure has since done such a 
ministry. A modification is the constant resource of weak, 
undeciding minds. To repeal by a denial of our right to 20 
tax in the preamble (and this too did not want advisers), 
would have cut, in the heroic style, the Gordian knot with a 
sword. Either measure would have cost no more than a day's 
debate. But when the total repeal was adopted ; and adopted 
on principles of policy, of equity, and of commerce ; this plan 25 
made it necessary to enter into many and difficult measures. 
It became necessary to open a very large field of evidence 
commensurate to these extensive views. But then this labor 
did knight's service. It opened the eyes of several to the 
true state of the American affairs ; it enlarged their ideas ; it 30 
removed prejudices ; and it conciliated the opinions and affec- 
tions of men. The noble lord, who then took the lead in 
administration, my honorable friend under me, and a right 



42 



EDMUND BURKE 



honorable gentleman (if he will not reject his share, and it 
was a large one, of this business) exerted the most laudable 
industry in bringing before you the fullest, most impartial, and 
kast garbled body of evidence that ever was produced to this 
5 House. I think the inquiry lasted in the committee for six 
weeks ; and at its conclusion this House, by an independent, 
noble, spirited, and unexpected majority ; by a majority that 
will redeem all the acts ever done by majorities in Parliament ; 
in the teeth of all the old mercenary Swiss of state, in despite 

10 of all the speculators and augurs of political events, in defiance 
of the whole embattled legion of veteran pensioners and prac- 
tised instruments of a court, gave a total repeal to the Stamp 
Act, and (if it had been so permitted) a lasting peace to this 
whole empire. 

15 I state, Sir, these particulars, because this act of spirit and 
fortitude has lately been, in the circulation of the season, and 
in some hazarded declamations in this House, attributed to 
timidity. If, Sir, the conduct of ministry, in proposing the 
repeal, had arisen from timidity with regard to themselves, it 

20 would have been greatly to be condemned. Interested timidity 
disgraces as much in the cabinet, as personal timidity does in 
the field. But timidity, with regard to the well-being of our 
country, is heroic virtue. The noble lord who then conducted 
affairs, and his worthy colleagues, whilst they trembled at the 

25 prospect of such distresses as you have since brought upon 
yourselves, were not afraid steadily to look in the face that 
glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have 
blenched. He looked in the face one of the ablest, and, let 
me say, not the most scrupulous oppositions, that perhaps 

30 ever was in this House, and withstood it, unaided by even 
one of the usual supports of administration. He did this when 
he repealed the Stamp Act. He looked in the face a person 
he had long respected and regarded, and whose aid was then 



AMERICAN TAXATION 43 

particularly wanting; I mean Lord Chatham. He did this 
when he passed the Declaratory Act. 

It is now given out, for the usual purposes, by the usual 
emissaries, that Lord Rockingham did not consent to the 
repeal of this act until he was bullied into it by Lord Chat- 5 
ham ; and the reporters have gone so far as publicly to assert, 
in an hundred companies, that the honorable gentleman under 
the gallery, who proposed the repeal in the American com- 
mittee, had another set of resolutions in his pocket directly 
the reverse of those he moved. These artifices of a desperate 10 
cause are at this time spread abroad, with incredible care, in 
every part of the town, from the highest to the lowest com- 
panies ; as if the industry of the circulation were to make 
amends for the absurdity of the report. 

Sir, whether the noble lord is of a complexion to be bullied 15 
by Lord Chatham, or by any man, I must submit to those who 
know him. I confess, when I look back to that time, I con- 
sider him as placed in one of the most trying situations in 
which, perhaps, any man ever stood. In the House of Peers 
there were very few of the ministry, out of the noble lord's 20 
own particular connection (except Lord Egmont, who acted, 
as far as I could discern, an honorable and manly part), that 
did not look to some other future arrangement, which warped 
his politics. There were in both Houses new and menacing 
appearances, that might very naturally drive any other, than a 25 
most resolute minister, from his measure, or from his station. 
The household troops openly revolted. The allies of ministry 
(those, I mean, who supported some of their measures, but 
refused responsibility for any) endeavored to undermine their 
credit, and to take ground that must be fatal to the success of 30 
the very cause which they would be thought to countenance. 
The question of the repeal was brought on by ministry in the 
committee of this House, in the very instant when it was 



44 EDMUND BURKE 

known that more than one court negotiation was carrying on 
with the heads of the opposition. Everything, upon every 
side, was full of traps and mines. Earth below shook; heaven 
above menaced ; all the elements of ministerial safety were 
5 dissolved. It was in the midst of this chaos of plots and 
counterplots ; it was in the midst of this complicated warfare 
against public opposition and private treachery, that the firm- 
ness of that noble person was put to the proof. He never 
stirred from his ground ; no, not an inch. He remained fixed 

io and determined, in principle, in measure, and in conduct. 
He practised no managements. He secured no retreat. He 
sought no apology. 

I will likewise do justice, I ought to do it, to the honorable 
gentleman who led us in this House. Far from the duplicity 

1 5 wickedly charged on him, he acted his part with alacrity and 
resolution. We all felt inspired by the example he gave us, 
down even to myself, the weakest in that phalanx. I declare 
for one, I knew well enough (it could not be concealed from 
anybody) the true state of things ; but, in my life, I never 

20 came with so much spirits into this House. It was a time for 
a man to act in. We had powerful enemies ; but we had 
faithful and determined friends ; and a glorious cause. We 
had a great battle to fight ; but we had the means of fighting ; 
not as now, when our arms are tied behind us. We did fight 

^5 that day and conquer. 

I remember, Sir, with a melancholy pleasure, the situation 
of the honorable gentleman who made the motion for the 
repeal ; in that crisis, when the whole trading interest of this 
empire, crammed into your lobbies, with a trembling and 

30 anxious expectation, waited, almost to a winter's return of 
light, their fate from your resolutions. When, at length, you 
had determined in their favor, and your doors, thrown open, 
showed them the figure of their deliverer in the well-earned 



AMERICAN TAXATION 45 

triumph of his important victory, from the whole of that grave 
multitude there arose an involuntary burst of gratitude and 
transport. They jumped upon him like children on a long 
absent father. They clung about him as captives about their 
redeemer. All England, all America joined in his applause. 5 
Nor did he seem insensible to the best of all earthly rewards, 
the love and admiration of his fellow-citizens. Hope elevated 
and joy brightened his crest. I stood near him; and his face, 
to use the expression of the Scripture of the first martyr, " his 
face was as if it had been the face of an angel." I do not 10 
know how others feel ; but if I had stood in that situation, I 
never would have exchanged it for all that kings in their 
profusion could bestow. I did hope that that day's danger 
and honor would have been a bond to hold us all together for 
ever. But, alas ! that, with other pleasing visions, is long since 15 
vanished. 

Sir, this act of supreme magnanimity has been represented, 
as if it had been a measure of an administration, that, having 
no scheme of their own, took a middle line, pilfered a bit from 
one side and a bit from the other. Sir, they took no middle 20 
lines. They differed fundamentally from the schemes of both 
parties ; but they preserved the objects of both. They pre- 
served the authority of Great Britain. They preserved the 
equity of Great Britain. They made the Declaratory Act ; 
they repealed the Stamp Act. They did both fully ; because 25 
the Declaratory Act was without qualification ; and the repeal 
of the Stamp Act total. This they did in the situation I have 
described. 

Now, Sir, what will the adversary say to both these acts? 
If the principle of the Declaratory Act was not good, the 30 
principle we are contending for this day is monstrous. If the 
principle of the repeal was not good, why are we not at war 
for a real, substantial, effective revenue? If both were bad, 



4 6 EDMUND BURKE 

why has this ministry incurred all the inconveniences of both 
and of all schemes? Why have they enacted, repealed, 
enforced, yielded, and now attempt to enforce again? 
Sir, I think I may as well now, as at any other time, speak 
5 to a certain matter of fact not wholly unrelated to the question 
under your consideration. We, who would persuade you to 
revert to the ancient policy of this kingdom, labor under the 
effect of this short current phrase, which the court leaders have 
given out to all their corps, in order to take away the credit 

10 of those who would prevent you from that frantic war you are 
going to wage upon your colonies. Their cant is this; "All 
the disturbances in America have been created by the repeal 
of the Stamp Act." I suppress for a moment my indignation 
at the falsehood, baseness, and absurdity of this most audacious 

15 assertion. Instead of remarking on the motives and charac- 
ter of those who have issued it for circulation, I will clearly lay 
before you the state of America, antecedently to that repeal ; 
after the repeal ; and since the renewal of the schemes of 
American taxation. 

20 It is said, that the disturbances, if there were any, before 
the repeal, were slight ; and without difficulty or inconven- 
ience might have been suppressed. For an answer to this 
assertion I will send you to the great author and patron of the 
Stamp Act, who certainly meaning well to the authority of 

25 this country, and fully apprized of the state of that, made, 
before a repeal was so much as agitated in this House, the 
motion which is on your journals; and which, to save the 
« lerk the trouble of turning to it, I will now read to you. It was 
for an amendment to the address of the 17th of December, 

30 1765 : 

" To express our just resentment and indignation at the out- 
rageous tumults and insurrections which have been excited and 
carried on in North America; and at the resistance given by 



AMERICAN TAXATION 47 

open and rebellions force to the execution of the laws in that 
part of his Majesty's dominions. And to assure his Majesty, 
that his faithful Commons, animated with the warmest duty 
and attachment to his royal person and government, will firmly 
and effectually support his Majesty in all such measures as shall 5 
be necessary for preserving and supporting the legal dependence 
of the colonies on the mother country," etc., etc. 

Here was certainly a disturbance preceding the repeal ; 
such a disturbance as Mr. Grenville thought necessary to 
qualify by the name of an insurrection, and the epithet of a 10 
rebellious force : terms much stronger than any, by which 
those who then supported his motion, have ever since thought 
proper to distinguish the subsequent disturbances in America. 
They were disturbances which seemed to him and his friends 
to justify as strong a promise of support, as hath been usual to 15 
give in the beginning of a war with the most powerful and de- 
clared enemies. When the accounts of the American governors 
came before the House, they appeared stronger even than 
the warmth of public imagination had painted them ; so much 
stronger, that the papers on your table bear me out in saying, 20 
that all the late disturbances, which have been at one time the 
minister's motives for the repeal of five out of six of the new 
court taxes, and are now his pretenses for refusing to repeal 
that sixth, did not amount — why do I compare them ? — no, 
not to a tenth part of the tumults and violence which prevailed 25 
long before the repeal of that act. 

Ministry cannot refuse the authority of the commander-in- 
chief, General Gage, who, in his letter of the 4th of November, 
from New York, thus represents the state of things : 

"It is difficult to say, from the highest to the lowest, who has 30 
not been accessory to this i?isurrection, either by writing or 
mutual agreements to oppose the act, by what they are pleased 
to term all legal opposition to it. Nothing effectual has been 



48 EDMUND BURKE 

proposed either to prevent or quell the tumult. The rest of the 
provinces are in the same situation as to a positive refusal to 
take the stamps ; and threatening those who shall take them, 
to plunder and murder them ; and this affair stands in all the 
5 provinces, that unless the act, from its own nature, enforce 
itself, nothing but a very considerable military force can do it." 

It is remarkable, Sir, that the persons who formerly trum- 
peted forth the most loudly, the violent resolutions of assem- 
blies ; the universal insurrections ; the seizing and burning the 

10 stamped papers; the forcing stamp officers to resign their 
commissions under the gallows ; the rifling and pulling down 
of the houses of magistrates; and the expulsion from their 
country of all who dared to write or speak a single word in 
defense of the powers of Parliament ; these very trumpeters 

15 are now the men that represent the whole as a mere trifle ; and 
choose to date all the disturbances from the repeal of the 
Stamp Act, which put an end to them. Hear your officers 
abroad, and let them refute this shameless falsehood, who, in 
all their correspondence, state the disturbances as owing to 

20 their true causes, the discontent of the people, from the taxes. 
You have this evidence in your own archives — and it will 
give you complete satisfaction ; if you are not so far lost to 
all parliamentary ideas of information, as rather to credit the 
lie of the day, than the record of your own House. 

25 Sir, this vermin of court reporters, when they are forced 
into day upon one point, are sure to burrow in another ; but 
they shall have no refuge : I will make them bolt out of all 
their holes. Conscious that they must be baffled, when they 
attribute a precedent disturbance to a subsequent measure, 

p they take other ground almost as absurd, but very common in 
modern practice, and very wicked ; which is, to attribute the 
ill effect of ill-judged conduct to the arguments which had 
been used to dissuade us from it. They say, that the opposition 



AMERICAN TAXATION 49 

made in Parliament to the Stamp Act at the time of its 
passing, encouraged the Americans to their resistance. This 
has even formally appeared in print in a regular volume, from 
an advocate of that faction, a Dr. Tucker. This Dr. Tucker is 
already a dean, and his earnest labors in this vineyard will, I 5 
suppose, raise him to a bishopric. But this assertion too, just 
like the rest, is false. In all the papers which have loaded your 
table ; in all the vast crowd of verbal witnesses that appeared 
at your bar, witnesses which were indiscriminately produced 
from both sides of the House ; not the least hint of such a 10 
cause of disturbance has ever appeared. As to the fact of a 
strenuous opposition to the Stamp Act, I sat as a stranger in 
your gallery when the act was under consideration. Far from 
anything inflammatory, I never heard a more languid debate 
in this House. No more than two or three gentlemen, as I 15 
remember, spoke against the act, and that with great reserve 
and remarkable temper. There was but one division in the 
whole progress of the bill ; and the minority did not reach to 
more than 39 or 40. In the House of Lords I do not recollect 
that there was any debate or division at all. I am sure there 20 
was no protest. In fact, the affair passed with so very, very 
little noise, that in town they scarcely knew the nature of 
what you were doing. The opposition to the bill in England 
never could have done this mischief, because there scarcely 
ever was less of opposition to a bill of consequence. 25 

Sir, the agents and distributors of falsehoods have, with 
their usual industry, circulated another lie of the same nature 
with the former. It is this, that the disturbances arose from 
the account which had been received in America of the change 
in the ministry. No longer awed, it seems, with the spirit of 30 
the former rulers, they thought themselves a match for what 
our calumniators choose to qualify by the name of so feeble a 
ministry as succeeded. Feeble in one sense these men certainly 



5 o EDMUND BURKE 

may be called ; for with all their efforts, and they have made 
many, they have not been able to resist the distempered vigor, 
and insane alacrity with which you are rushing to your ruin. 
But it does so happen, that the falsity of this circulation is (like 
5 the rest) demonstrated by indisputable dates and records. 

So little was the change known in America, that the letters 
of your governors, giving an account of these disturbances 
long after they had arrived at their highest pitch, were all 
directed to the old ministry, and particularly to the Earl of 

io Halifax, the Secretary of State corresponding with the colo- 
nies, without once in the smallest degree intimating the slight- 
est suspicion of any ministerial revolution whatsoever. The 
ministry was not changed in England until the tenth day of 
July, 1765. On the 14th of the preceding June, Governor 

15 Fauquier from Virginia writes thus; and writes thus to the 
Earl of Halifax : 

"Government is set at defiance, not having strength enough 
in her hands to enforce obedience to the laws of the com- 
munity. . . . The private distress, which every man feels, 
20 increases the general dissatisfaction at the duties laid by the 
Stamp Act, which breaks out, and shows itself upon every 
trilling occasion." 

The general dissatisfaction had produced some time before, 
that is, on the 29th of May, several strong public resolves 

25 against the Stamp Act ; and those resolves are assigned by 
Governor Bernard, as the cause of the insurrections in Massa- 
chuset's Bay, in his letter of the 15th of August, still addressed 
to the Earl of Halifax; and he continued to address such 
accounts to that minister quite to the 7th of September of the 

30 same year. Similar accounts, and of as late a date, were sent 
from other governors, and all directed to Lord Halifax. Not 
one of these letters indicates the slightest idea of a change, 
either known, or even apprehended. 



AMERICAN TAXATION 5 I 

Thus are blown away the insect race of courtly falsehoods ! 
thus perish the miserable inventions of the wretched runners 
for a wretched cause, which they have fly-blown into every 
weak and rotten part of the country, in vain hopes that when 
their maggots had taken wing, their importunate buzzing 5 
might sound something like the public voice ! 

Sir, I have troubled you sufficiently with the state of Amer- 
ica before the repeal. Now I turn to the honorable gentleman 
who so stoutly challenges us, to tell, whether, after the repeal, 
the provinces were quiet? This is coming home to the point. 10 
Here I meet him directly ; and answer most readily, They 
were quiet. And I, in my turn, challenge him to prove when, 
and where, and by whom, and in what numbers, and with what 
violence, the other laws of trade, as gentlemen assert, were 
violated in consequence of your concession? or that even your 15 
other revenue laws were attacked? But I quit the vantage 
ground on which I stand, and where I might leave the burden 
of the proof upon him ; I walk down upon the open plain, 
and undertake to show, that they were not only quiet, but 
showed many unequivocal marks of acknowledgment and 20 
gratitude. And to give him every advantage, I select the 
obnoxious colony of Massachuset's Bay, which at this time 
(but without hearing her) is so heavily a culprit before Parlia- 
ment — I will select their proceedings even under circumstances 
of no small irritation. For, a little imprudently, I must say, 25 
Governor Bernard mixed in the administration of the lenitive 
of the repeal no small acrimony arising from matters of a 
separate nature. Yet see, Sir, the effect of that lenitive, though 
mixed with these bitter ingredients j and how this rugged people 
can express themselves on a measure of concession. 30 

" If it is not now in our power " (say they in their address to 
Governor Bernard) " in so full a manner as will be expected, 
to show our respectful gratitude to the mother country, or to 



52 



EDMUND BURKE 



make a dutiful and affectionate return to the indulgence of 
the King and Parliament, it shall be no fault of ours ; for this 
we intend, and hope we shall be able fully to effect." 

Would to God that this temper' had been cultivated, man- 
5 aged, and set in action ! other effects than those which we 
have since felt would have resulted from it. On the requi- 
sition for compensation to those who had suffered from the 
violence of the populace, in the same address they say, 

"The recommendation enjoined by Mr. Secretary Con- 
10 way's letter, and in consequence thereof made to us, we will 
embrace the first convenient opportunity to consider and act 
upon." 

They did consider ; they did act upon it. They obeyed the 
requisition. I know the mode has been chicaned upon ; but it 

15 was substantially obeyed ; and much better obeyed, than I fear 
the parliamentary requisition of this session will be, though 
enforced by all your rigor, and backed with all your power. 
In a word, the damages of popular fury were compensated by 
legislative gravity. Almost every other part of America in 

20 various ways demonstrated their gratitude. I am bold to say, 
that so sudden a calm recovered after so violent a storm is 
without parallel in history. To say that no other disturbance 
should happen from any other cause is folly. But as far as 
appearances went, by the judicious sacrifice of one law, you 

25 procured an acquiescence in all that remained. After this 

experience, nobody shall persuade me, when a whole people 

are concerned, that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation. 

I hope the honorable gentleman has received a fair and full 

answer to his question. 

30 I have done with the third period of your policy ; that of 
your repeal ; and the return of your ancient system, and your 
ancient tranquillity and concord. Sir, this period was not as 



AMERICAN TAXATION 53 

long as it was happy. Another scene was opened, and other 
actors appeared on the stage. The state, in the condition 
I have described it, was delivered into the hands of Lord 
Chatham — a great and celebrated name ; a name that keeps 
the name of this country respectable in every other on the 5 
globe. It may be truly called, 

Clarum et venerabile nomen 

Gentibus, et multum nostras quod proderat urbi. 

Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, 
his superior eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent serv- 10 
ices, the vast space he fills in the eye of mankind ; and, more 
than all the rest, his fall from power, which, like death, canon- 
izes and sanctifies a great character, will not suffer me to cen- 
sure any part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him ; I 
am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those who have 15 
betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their malevo- 
lence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have 
leave to lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that 
time, to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak 
with the freedom of history, and I hope without offense. One 20 
or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most 
indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too gen- 
eral, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to 
himself ; and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to 
his country ; measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are 25 
for ever incurable. He made an administration, so checkered 
and speckled ; he put together a piece of joinery, so crossly 
indented and whimsically dove-tailed ; a cabinet so variously 
inlaid ; such a piece of diversified mosaic ; such a tesselated 
pavement without cement ; here a bit of black stone, and 30 
there a bit of white ; patriots and courtiers, King's friends 
and republicans ; whigs and tories ; treacherous friends and 



54 EDMUND BURKE 

open enemies: that it was indeed a very curious show; but 
utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The col- 
leagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at 
each other, and were obliged to ask, " Sir, your name? — Sir, 
5 you have the advantage of me — Mr. Such-a-one — I beg a 
thousand pardons — " I venture to say, it did so happen, that 
persons had a single office divided between them, who had 
never spoke to each other in their lives ; until they found them- 
selves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, 

10 in the same truckle-bed. 

Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much 
the larger part of his enemies and opposers into power, the 
confusion was such, that his own principles could not possibly 
have any effect or influence in the conduct of affairs. If ever 

15 he fell into a fit of the gout, or if any other cause withdrew 
him from public cares, principles directly the contrary were 
sure to predominate. When he had executed his plan, he had 
not an inch of ground to stand upon. When he had accom- 
plished his scheme of administration, he was no longer a 

20 minister. 

When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system 
was on a wide sea, without chart or compass. The gentlemen, 
his particular friends, who, with the names of various depart- 
ments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted a 

25 part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and 
with a confidence in him, which was justified even in its 
extravagance by his superior abilities, had never, in any 
instance, presumed upon any opinion of their own. Deprived 
of his guiding influence, they were whirled about, the sport of 

30 every gust, and easily driven into any port ; and as those who 
joined with them in manning the vessel were the most directly 
opposite to his opinions, measures, and character, and far the 
most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, 



AMERICAN TAXATION 



55 



so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds 
of his friends ; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly 
out of the course of his policy. As if it were to insult as well 
as to betray him, even long before the close of the first session . 
of his administration, when everything was publicly transacted, 5 
and with great parade, in his name, they made an act, declar- 
ing it highly just and expedient to raise a revenue in America. 
For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely 
set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his 
descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens 10 
arose another luminary, and, for his hour, became lord of the 
ascendant. 

This light too is past and set for ever. You understand, to 
be sure, that I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the 
reproducer of this fatal scheme; whom I cannot even now 15 
remember without some degree of sensibility. In truth, Sir, 
he was the delight and ornament of this House, and the charm 
of every private society which he honored with his presence. 
Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in any country, 
a man of a more pointed and finished wit; and (where his 20 
passions were not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, 
and penetrating judgment. If he had not so great a stock, as 
some have had who flourished formerly, of knowledge long 
treasured up, he knew better by far, than any man I ever was 
acquainted with, how to bring together within a short time, all 25 
that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate 
that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter 
skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most 
luminous explanation, and display of his subject. His style of 
argument was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. 30 
He hit the House just between wind and water. — And not 
being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in ques- 
tion, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the 



5<> EDMUND BURKE 

preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers 
required ; to whom he was always in perfect unison. He con- 
formed exactly to the temper of the House ; and he seemed 
to guide, because he was always sure to follow it. 
5 I beg pardon, Sir, if when I speak of this and of other great 
men, I appear to digress in saying something of their char- 
acters. In this eventful history of the revolutions of America, 
the characters of such men are of much importance. Great 
men are the guide-posts and land-marks in the state. The 

10 credit of such men at court, or in the nation, is the sole cause 
of all the public measures. It would be an invidious thing 
(most foreign, I trust, to what you think my disposition) to 
remark the errors into which the authority of great names has 
brought the nation, without doing justice at the same time 

15 to the great qualities, whence that authority arose. The sub- 
ject is instructive to those who wish to form themselves on 
whatever of excellence has gone before them. There are 
many young members in the House (such of late has been 
the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that 

20 prodigy, Charles Townshend ; nor of course know what a fer- 
ment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebul- 
lition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had 
undoubtedly — many of us remember them ; we are this day 
considering the effect of them. But he had no failings which 

25 were not owing to a noble cause ; to an ardent, generous, per- 
haps an immoderate passion for fame ; a passion which is the 
instinct of all great souls. He worshiped that goddess where- 
soever she appeared ; but he paid his particular devotions to 
her in her favorite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House 

30 of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals that 
compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe, 
that this House has a collective character of its own. That 
character too, however imperfect, is not unamiable. Like all 



AMERICAN TAXATION 57 

great public collections of men, you possess a marked love of 
virtue, and an abhorrence of vice. But among vices, there is 
none which the House abhors in the same degree with obsti- 
nacy. Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice ; and in the 
changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of 5 
great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that 
almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, con- 
stancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, 
are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you 
have so just an abhorrence ; and in their excess, all these 10 
virtues very easily fall into it. He, who paid such a punctil- 
ious attention to all your feelings, certainly took care not to 
shock them by that vice which is the most disgustful to you. 

That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased, 
betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. He had voted, 15 
and in the year 1765, had been an advocate for the Stamp 
Act. Things and the disposition of men's minds were changed. 
In short, the Stamp Act began to be no favorite in this House. 
He therefore attended at the private meeting, in which the 
resolutions moved by a right honorable gentleman were settled ; 20 
resolutions leading to the repeal. The next day he voted for 
that repeal ; and he would have spoken for it too, if an illness 
(not as was then given out a political, but to my knowledge, 
a very real illness) had not prevented it. 

The very next session, as the fashion of this world passeth 25 
away, the repeal began to be in as bad an odor in this House 
as the Stamp Act had been in the session before. To conform 
to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail mostly 
amongst those most in power, he declared, very early in the 
winter, that a revenue must be had out of America. Instantly 30 
he was tied down to his engagements by some, who had no 
objection to such experiments, when made at the cost of 
persons for whom they had no particular regard. The whole 



58 EDMUND BURKE 

body of courtiers drove him onward. They always talked as if 
the King stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something 
of the kind should be done. 

Here this extraordinary man, then Chancellor of the Ex- 
5 chequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally 
was the object of his life ; but to tax and to please, no more 
than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However 
he attempted it. To render the tax palatable to the partisans 
of American revenue, he made a preamble stating the necessity 

10 of such a revenue. To close with the American distinction, 
this revenue was external or port-duty ; but again, to soften it 
to the other party, it was a duty of supply. To gratify the 
colonists, it was laid on British manufactures; to satisfy the 
merchants of Britain, the duty was trivial, and (except that 

15 on tea, which touched only the devoted East India Company) 
on none of the grand objects of commerce. To counterwork 
the American contraband, the duty on tea was reduced from 
a shilling to threepence. But to secure the favor of those 
who would tax America, the scene of collection was changed, 

20 and, with the rest, it was levied in the colonies. What need 
I say more? This fine-spun scheme had the usual fate of all 
exquisite policy. But the original plan of the duties, and the 
mode of executing that plan, both arose singly and solely from 
a love of our applause. He was truly the child of the House. 

25 He never thought, did, or said anything, but with a view to 
you. He every day adapted himself to your disposition ; and 
adjusted himself before it, as at a looking-glass. 

He had observed (indeed it could not escape him) that 
several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had 

30 formerly rendered themselves considerable in this House by 
one method alone. They were a race of men (I hope in God 
the species is extinct) who, when they rose in their place, no 
man living could divine, from any known adherence to parties, 



AMERICAN TAXATION 59 

to opinions, or to principles ; from any order or system in their 
politics ; or from any sequel or connection in their ideas, what 
part they were going to take in any debate. It is astonishing 
how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called 
the attention of all parties on such men. All eyes were fixed 5 
on them, all ears open to hear them ; each party gaped, and 
looked alternately for their vote, almost to the end of their 
speeches. While the House hung in this uncertainty, now the 
Hear-hims rose from this side — now they rebellowed from 
the other; and that party to whom they fell at length from 10 
their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in 
a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temp- 
tation too great to be resisted by one, to whom, a single whiff 
of incense withheld gave much greater pain, than he received 
delight in the clouds of it, which daily rose about him from the 15 
prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a can- 
didate for contradictory honors ; and his great aim was to make 
those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in anything 
else. 

Hence arose this unfortunate act, the subject of this day's 20 
debate ; from a disposition which, after making an American 
revenue to please one, repealed it to please others, and again 
revived it in hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching some- 
thing in the ideas of all. 

This revenue act of 1767 formed the fourth period of 25 
American policy. How we have fared since then — what woeful 
variety of schemes have been adopted ; what enforcing, and 
what repealing ; what bullying, and what submitting ; what 
doing, and undoing ; what straining, and what relaxing ; what 
assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without 30 
obedience ; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and on 
meeting that resistance, recalled ; what shiftings, and changes, 
and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no 



6o EDMUND BURKE 

possibility of order, consistency, vigor, or even so much as 
a decent unity of color in any one public measure. — It is a 
tedious, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it out 
some other time ; on a former occasion I tried your temper on 
5 a part of it ; for the present I shall forbear. 

After all these changes and agitations, your immediate situa- 
tion upon the question on your paper is at length brought to 
this. You have an act of Parliament, stating, that " it is expe- 
dient to raise a revenue in America." By a partial repeal you 

10 annihilated the greatest part of that revenue, which this pre- 
amble declares to be so expedient. You have substituted no 
other in the place of it. A Secretary of State has disclaimed, 
in the King's name, all thoughts of such a substitution in 
future. The principle of this disclaimer goes to what has been 

15 left, as well as what has been repealed. The tax which lingers 
after its companions (under a preamble declaring an American 
revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the 
theory of that preamble) militates with the assurance authen- 
tically conveyed to the colonies ; and is an exhaustless source 

20 of jealousy and animosity. On this state, which I take to be a 
fair one; not being able to discern any grounds of honor, 
advantage, peace, or power, for adhering, either to the act or 
to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads to 
the repeal of both. 

25 If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure some- 
thing to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice. 
If you must employ your strength, employ it to uphold you in 
some honorable right, or some profitable wrong. If you are 
apprehensive that the concession recommended to you, though 

30 proper, should be a means of drawing on you further but 
unreasonable claims, — why then employ your force in sup- 
porting that reasonable concession against those unreasonable 
demands. You will employ it with more grace; with better 



AMERICAN TAXATION 6l 

effect; and with great probable concurrence of all the quiet 
and rational people in the provinces ; who are now united with, 
and hurried away by, the violent ; having indeed different dis- 
positions, but a common interest. If you apprehend that on a 
concession you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the 5 
extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my 
advice is this ; when you have recovered your old, your strong, 
your tenable position, then face about — stop short — do 
nothing more — reason not at all — oppose the ancient policy 
and practice of the empire, as a rampart against the specula- 10 
tions of innovators on both sides of the question ; and you 
will stand on great, manly, and sure ground. On this solid 
basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds towards 
you. 

Your ministers, in their own and his Majesty's name, have 15 
already adopted the American distinction of internal and 
external duties. It is a distinction, whatever merit it may 
have, that was originally moved by the Americans themselves ; 
and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they are not pushed 
with too much logic and too little sense, in all the conse- 20 
quences. That is, if external taxation be understood, as they 
and you understand it, when you please, to be not a distinc- 
tion of geography, but of policy ; that it is a power for reg- 
ulating trade, and not for supporting establishments. The 
distinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is of 25 
most weighty consideration in practice. Recover your old 
ground, and your old tranquillity — try it — I am persuaded 
the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence 
is once restored, the odious and suspicious summum jus will 
perish of course. The spirit of practicability, of moderation, 30 
and mutual convenience, will never call in geometrical exact- 
ness as the arbitrator of an amicable settlement. Consult 
and follow your experience. Let not the long story with 



l.I) MUNI) BURKE 

which I have exercised your patience, prove fruitless to your 
interests. 

For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) 
that the proposition of the honorable gentleman for the repeal 
5 could go to America without the attendance of the penal bills. 
Alone I could almost answer for its success. I cannot be cer- 
tain of its reception in the bad company it may keep. In 
such heterogeneous assortments, the most innocent person will 
lose the effect of his innocency. Though you should send out 

io this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a destroying angel 
too ; and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two 
adverse spirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what 
I dare not say : whether the lenient measures would cause 
American passion to subside, or the severe would increase its 

15 fury — all this is in the hand of Providence; yet now, even 
now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue, and efficacious 
operation of lenity, though working in darkness, and in chaos, 
in the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination. I 
should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end. 

20 Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end 
this session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a pro- 
ductive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out : name, fix, 
ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity ; define its objects ; 
provide for its collection ; and then fight when you have some- 

25 thing to fight for. If you murder — rob! If you kill, take 
possession ; and do not appear in the character of madmen, as 
well as a^assins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, 
with* nit an object. But may better counsels guide you ! 

Vgain, and again, revert to your old principles — seek 

30 peace and ensue it — leave America, if she has taxable mat- 
ter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the dis- 
tinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their boundaries. 
I do qoI filter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the 



AMERICAN TAXATION 63 

very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently 
stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, 
will die along with it. They, and we, and their and our ances- 
tors, have been happy under that system. Let the memory 
of all actions, in contradiction to that good old mode, on both 5 
sides, be extinguished for ever. Be content to bind America 
by laws of trade ; you have always done it. Let this be your 
reason for binding their trade. Do not burden them by taxes ; 
you were not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be 
your reason for not taxing. These are the arguments of states 10 
and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the schools ; for there only 
they may be discussed with safety. But if, intemperately, 
unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source 
of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences 
odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable 15 
nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these 
means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you 
drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. 
If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, 
which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your 20 
face. Nobody will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gen- 
tlemen on the other side call forth all their ability ; let the 
best of them get up, and tell me, what one character of liberty 
the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are 
free from, if they are bound in their property and industry, 25 
by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at 
the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose 
to impose, without the least share in granting them? When 
they bear the burdens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring 
them to bear the burdens of unlimited revenue too? The 30 
Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery — that it 
is legal slavery, will be no compensation, either to his feelings 
or his understanding. 



64 



EDMUND BURKE 



A noble lord, who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire 
of ingenuous youth ; and when he has modeled the ideas of 
a lively imagination by further experience, he will be an orna- 
ment to his country in either House. He has said, that the 

5 Americans are our children ; and how can they revolt against 
their parent ? He says, that if they are not free in their pres- 
ent state, England is not free ; because Manchester, and other 
considerable places, are not represented. So then, because 
some towns in England are not represented, America is to 

io have no representative at all. They are "our children"; but 
when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is 
it because the natural resistance of things, and the various 
mutations of time, hinders our government, or any scheme of 
government, from being any more than a sort of approximation 

15 to the right, is it therefore that the colonies are to recede 
from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assim- 
ilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance 
the beauteous countenance of British liberty; are we to turn 
to them the shameful parts of our constitution? are we to 

20 give them our weakness for their strength ; our opprobrium 
for their glory; and the slough of slavery, which we are not 
able to work off, to serve them for their freedom? 

If this be the case, ask yourselves this question, Will they 
be content in such a state of slavery? If not, look to the 

25 consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people, 
who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. 
Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but dis- 
content, disorder, disobedience ; and such is the state of 
America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you 

30 could only end just where you begun ; that is, to tax where 
no revenue is to be found, to — my voice fails me; my 
inclination indeed carries me no further — all is confusion 
beyond it. 



AMERICAN TAXATION 65 

Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit down I 
must say something to another point with which gentlemen 
urge us. What is to become of the Declaratory Act asserting 
the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon 
the practice of taxation? 5 

For my part I look upon the rights stated in that act, 
exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first 
proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with 
great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the impe- 
rial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colo- 10 
nists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most 
reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great 
Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capaci- 
ties : one as the local legislature of this island, providing for 
all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument 15 
than the executive power. — The other, and I think her nobler 
capacity, is what I call her imperial character; in which, as 
from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several 
inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all, without 
annihilating any. As all these provincial legislatures are only 20 
coordinate to each other, they ought all to be subordinate 
to her ; else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope 
for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It 
is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and 
to aid the weak and deficient, by the over-ruling plenitude of 25 
her power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others, 
whilst they are equal to the common ends of their institution. 
But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of 
provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be 
boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament 30 
limited, may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But sup- 
pose the requisitions are not obeyed ? What ! Shall there be 
no reserved power in the empire, to supply a deficiency which 



66 l.DMUND BURKE 

may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? We are engaged 
in war — the Secretary of State calls upon the colonies to con- 
tribute — some would do it, I think most would cheerfully fur- 
nish whatever is demanded — one or two, suppose, hang back, 
5 and, easing themselves, let the stress of the draft lie on the 
others — surely it is proper, that some authority might legally 
say — " Tax yourselves for the common supply, or Parliament 
will do it for you." This backwardness was, as I am told, actually 
the case of Pennsylvania for some short time towards the begin- 

10 ning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in the 
colony. But whether the fact were so, or otherwise, the case 
is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. 
But then this ought to be no ordinary power ; nor ever used in 
the first instance. This is what I meant, when I have said at 

1 5 various times, that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament 
as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply. 

Such, Sir, is my idea of the constitution of the British empire, 
as distinguished from the constitution of Britain ; and on these 
grounds I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently 

20 reconciled through the whole ; whether to serve a refining 
speculatist, or a factious demagogue, I know not ; but enough 
surely for the ease and happiness of man. 

Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we drew more from the 
colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could 

25 extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war. It 
has never been once denied — and what reason have we to 
imagine that the colonies would not have proceeded in supply- 
ing government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hin- 
dered them from contributing, by interrupting the channel in 

30 which their liberality flowed with so strong a course ; by attempt- 
ing to take, instead of being satisfied to receive? Sir William 
Temple says, that Holland has loaded itself with ten times the 
impositions which it revolted from Spain, rather than submit 



AMERICAN TAXATION 67 

to. He says true. Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither 
how to accumulate, nor how to extract. 

I charge therefore to this new and unfortunate system the 
loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but even of 
revenue, which its friends are contending for. — It is morally 5 
certain, that we have lost at least a million of free grants since 
the peace. I think we have lost a great deal more ; and that 
those who look for a revenue from the provinces, never could 
have pursued, even in that light, a course more directly repug- 
nant to their purposes. 10 

Now, Sir, I trust I have shown, first on that narrow ground 
which the honorable gentleman measured, that you are likely to 
lose nothing by complying with the motion, except what you 
have lost already. I have shown afterwards, that in time of 
peace you flourished in commerce, and, when war required it, 15 
had sufficient aid from the colonies, while you pursued your 
ancient policy ; that you threw everything into confusion when 
you made the Stamp Act ; and that you restored everything to 
peace and order when you repealed it. I have shown that the 
revival of the system of taxation has produced the very worst 20 
effects ; and that the partial repeal has produced, not partial 
good, but universal evil. Let these considerations, founded on 
facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back to our 
reason by the road of our experience. 

I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed measures; but 25 
surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better 
chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the 
way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the Act 
of Navigation when it ought to be enforced. You will your- 
selves open it where it ought still further to be opened. Pro- 30 
ceed in what you do, whatever you do, from policy, and not 
from rancor. Let us act like men, let us act like statesmen. 
Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. — It is agreed that 



68 EDMUND BURKE 

a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the profit, 
let us get rid of the odium. 

On this business of America, I confess I am serious, even to 
sadness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, 
5 and before I sat, in Parliament. The noble lord will, as usual, 
probably, attribute the part taken by me and my friends in this 
business, to a desire of getting his places. Let him enjoy this 
happy and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take 
away most of his wit, and all his argument. But I had rather 

io bear the brunt of all his wit, and indeed blows much heavier, 
than stand answerable to God for embracing a system that 
tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of 
his works. But I know the map of England, as well as the 
noble lord, or as any other person ; and I know that the way 

1 5 I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and honor- 
able friend under me on the floor has trod that road with great 
toil for upwards of twenty years together. He is not yet arrived 
at the noble lord's destination. However, the tracks of my 
worthy friend are those I have ever wished to follow ; because 

20 I know they lead to honor. Long may we tread the same road 
together ; whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh 
at us on our journey ! I honestly and solemnly declare, I have 
in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other rea- 
son, than that I think it laid deep in your truest interests — and 

25 that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes on the firmest founda- 
tions, a real, consistent, well-grounded authority in Parliament. 
Until you come back to that system, there will be no peace 
for England. 



NOTES 



3 4 obligingly furnished : " From 1640 to 177 1 the House of Commons 
was engaged in constant struggles to prevent the publication of its 
debates. Those efforts ceased after 1 77 1, but the task of a reporter 
was still very difficult. He was not allowed to take notes. No place 
was reserved to him, and he often found it hard to get admission into 
the space reserved for strangers. Besides, all strangers might at any 
time be excluded from the House at the desire of a single member. It 
was after the burning of the old Houses of Parliament in 1834 that 
special galleries were first provided for the press. Technically, the 
publication of debates is a breach of privilege even now ; but, in fact, 
a printer is not censured except for wilful misrepresentation." (Selby.) 

4 3a drawback: "a total or partial refund of a duty, paid either 
upon imported goods or upon home productions subject to excise, when 
they were exported. The object, of course, was to encourage exporta- 
tion. At the time at which Burke wrote commercial regulations were 
made, not so much with a view to the interests of trade as with a view 
to the accumulation of money for the maintenance of the country's 
military supremacy. The exporter, therefore, was encouraged, because to 
export is to sell to foreigners, that is, to bring money into the country." 
(Selby.) 

4 12 a committee of the whole House : A committee of the whole 
House is, in fact, the House itself, presided over by a chairman instead 
of by the Speaker. Its ordinary function is deliberation, not inquiry. 
All matters concerning the imposition of taxes or the grant of public 
money must be considered in committee, as preliminary to legislation. 
The main difference between the proceedings of a committee and those 
of an ordinary session is, that in a committee a member may speak more 
than once, in order that the details of a question may have the most 
minute examination. 

4 18 Sir : the Speaker of the House of Commons,- Sir Fletcher 
Norton, from 1770 to 1780. 

4 19 the honorable gentleman : It is out of order for a speaker to 
refer to a member by name. Burke is referring to Charles Wolfran 

69 



7° 



NOTES 



Cornwall, Esq., lately appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 
17S0 he succeeded Sir Fletcher Norton as Speaker, and in 17S4 he 
succeeded Mr. Rose Fuller as member for Rye. 

4 'JO this subject is not new : " The present debate had begun in the 
dullest possible style, and had reached its meridian. Rose Fuller, Rice, 
Captain Phipps, Stephen Fox, and Cornwall had already well tried the 
patience of the House. The members had begun to disperse to the ad- 
joining apartments, or places of refreshment. Hence the short, lashing, 
petulant exordium. ... It was necessary to arrest the attention of the 
House in the dullest part of a debate. The report of it spread rapidly, 
and members crowded back till the hall was filled to the utmost. It 
resounded throughout the speech with the loudest applause." (Payne.) 

4 23 nine long years : The Stamp Act was passed by the House of 
Commons on February 27, 1765. 

4 32 disgusting : wearisome or tedious. 

5 2 the same side of the House : The ministers and their supporters 
occupied the benches on the right of the Speaker, the opposition those 
on the left. Owing to a quarrel with his brother-in-law, who was Secre- 
tary of War, Cornwall had joined Lord Shelbume's faction, but he had 
soon returned to the ministers. 

5 8 his authority : as Lord of the Treasury. 

5 9 the poor opinions : Burke was always humble in his speeches. 
See 9 20, 25 19, 30 8, 38 20, 38 28, 44 17, 52 20, 53 17, 56 5, 60 5, 62 3-19, 
65 8, 67 11. 

6 29 take post on this concession : take their stand upon this conces- 
sion as a ground for future demands. 

6 32 duty on wine : Wine imported into the colonies was taxed £7 
per cask of 250 gallons. 

7 5 would to God: Appeals or references to God were more frequently 
used by Burke and his associates than by modern speakers. See 52 4, 
58 31, 62 15, 68 U. 

7 10 former parliamentary revenue: the revenue derived from the 
Navigation Acts. See p. xix. 

7 13 revived the scheme of taxation: by the act of 1767, often called 
the Townshend Act. 

8 5 six branches of duties : glass, paper, red lead, white lead, painters' 
colors, tea. 

8 9 the minister: Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer and 
First Lord of the Treasury. From 1770 to 1782 he was the leading min- 
ister, although he refused to be called Prime Minister. He was rather 



NOTES 71 

the agent than the responsible adviser of the King, who practically 
directed the policy of the ministry, even on the minutest points. When 
war broke out with the colonies, Lord North wished to resign, but 
remained in office at the urgent solicitation of the King. In 1783 he 
united with Fox and Burke to form the Coalition ministry. In the 
Letter to a Noble Lord, Burke says : " He was a man of admirable parts, 
of general knowledge, of a versatile understanding, fitted for every sort 
of business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful temper, and 
with a mind most perfectly disinterested. But it would be only to 
degrade myself by a weak adulation, and not to honor the memory of 
a great man, to deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and 
spirit of command that the time required." 

811 to repeal the duties upon glass, etc. : These duties were repealed 
on April 12, 1770. 

9 4 left unfinished : The entire paragraph is of course ironical. 

9 17 the lie direct : See Touchstone's remark in As You Like Lt, V, iv. 

9 22 ancient household troops : " the King's friends," or members of 
Commons directly controlled by the King. See p. xxiii. 

10 17 the paper in my hand : Lord Hillsborough's circular letter to 
the colonies, announcing the partial repeal of the act of 1767. Seep. xix. 
Lord Hillsborough (1718-1793) was President of the Board of Trade 
and Plantations from 1763 to 1766; Secretary of State" for the colonies 
from 1768 to 1772; and Secretary of State for the Northern Department 
in 1779. Hi s American policy was very much influenced by his corre- 
spondence with Governor Bernard. " His want of tact and judgment 
made him peculiarly unfitted for holding a delicate position in so 
critical a period." 

11 5 an advantage in lead: At that time England exported great 
quantities of lead from the mines of Cornwall ; at present Spain and 
the United States are large producers, and the advantage of England 
no longer exists. 

11 9 a duty on coals: In 1765 the duty on coal exported was eight 
shillings per chaldron of 2250 pounds. 

1 1 20 Tea is perhaps the most important object : Tea was the chief 
article of trade of the East India Company. The colonies consumed 
one third of the tea exported from India; each year they bought about 
three million pounds, valued at from ,£300,000 to ;£ 600,000. 

11 27 Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration: " Mr. Burke here pauses 
for a moment in the progress of his argument, to give us one of those 
fine generalizations with which he so often strengthens and dignifies his 



72 NOTES 

di.M ussion of a particular point, by rising to some broader truth with 
which it is connected. The stinging force of his imagery in some parts, 
and the beauty of it in others, are worthy of attention." (Goodrich.) 

12 17 the affairs of the East India Company: See p. xxvii. 

12 23 The monopoly of the most lucrative trades : The whole commerce 
of the East with Great Britain was in the hands of the company. 

12 27 an injudicious tax, etc. : Not only was the amount of the tax 
reduced, but the Americans refused to buy tea taxed under the Town- 
shend Act. An absurd regulation also required the company to keep 
a year's supply of tea in their warehouses. This caused an increase in 
price and a decrease in value. 

12 33 tea is next to a necessary of life : In 1827 Richard Rush, Secre- 
tary of the Treasury of the United States, urged a reduction of the tax 
on tea, saying : " The use of tea has become so general throughout the 
United States as to rank almost as a necessary of life." The use of 
tea in England was almost universal. Burke's friend, Arthur Young, in 
his Farmer' 's Tour through England (1771), said that the grand source 
of the distresses of the poor was "the application of money to superflui- 
ties which ought to be, and formerly was expended in necessaries." The 
poor took tea (with sugar) " twice a day and it was inconceivable how 
much it impoverished them ; in very many parishes they attributed their 
exorbitant rates solely to this luxury. ... If the men come to lose as 
much of their time at tea as the women, and injure their health by so 
bad a beverage, the poor*in general will find themselves far more dis- 
tressed than ever. . . . Labor has risen 25 per cent in eighteen years 
and rates 64 per cent in the same time, in order that the poor might 
drink tea twice, instead of once a day." 

13 1 our dear-bought East India committees : committees appointed 
by the House of Commons to investigate the affairs of the East India 
Company. " Dear-bought " means that their wearisome meetings and 
laborious reports had very little effect. See also p. xxvii. 

13 27 three-fourths of the duty ... is taken off: "Indian tea was first 
imported into England and sold by public auction to English merchants, 
who reexported it to America. When brought into England it paid a 
duty of twelve pence in the pound, which was, of course, added to the 
price of the tea when it was sold. Three-fourths of this duty was now 
refunded to the English exporter, who could therefore sell his tea 
cheaper by nine pence a pound, and a tax of three pence a pound was 
imposed in America. The net result to the Americans was that they 
paid six pent e a pound less for their tea." (Selby.) 



NOTES 73 

14 6 heavy excises on those articles: Excises are taxes on home 
products, as opposed to customs on imports. The excise on paper 
varied from 25 per cent on the finest to 200 per cent on the coarsest. 
The excise on flint and plate glass was about thirty shillings a hundred- 
weight. 

14 22 tea could bear an imposition: Tea was taxed 100 per cent in 
England. In 1827 tea imported into the United States paid the same 
tax. In 1900 a tax of ten cents a pound was imposed on the eighty- 
three million pounds imported. 

14 27 Mr. Hampden: In 1635 John Hampden refused to pay the 
"ship-money " tax to Charles I, because there was no immediate need 
for an increase in the navy to repel an invading enemy. 

16 14 a famous address for a revival: "agreed to in the Commons, 
February 8, 1769, requesting the King to revive the powers given for 
this purpose under an obsolete act of 35 Henry VIII." (Payne.) 

18 5 a matter of supply : In 1297 Edward I was forced to declare 
that no taxes should be levied without the consent of the people. 
Since 1688 all taxes for public expenses have been imposed by Parlia- 
ment. The only way by which the King can obtain money from taxes 
is by asking the Commons for a grant. 

19 l Lord Botetourt : Baron de Botetourt was appointed Governor of 
Virginia in 1768 and immediately went to the colony, although since 
1684 no governor had condescended to reside there. On his arrival it 
was his purpose to reduce the Virginians to submission either by per- 
suasion or by force ; but when he became better acquainted with the 
people he changed his views and entreated the ministry to repeal the 
offensive acts. This they promised, but they constantly postponed 
action. When Botetourt realized that they had no intention of fulfilling 
their promise, he at once demanded his own recall. His disappointment 
resulted in his death shortly afterwards of a bilious fever. A statue of 
him was erected at William and Mary's College, Virginia. 

19 23 rather part with his crown, than preserve it by deceit: "A 
material point is omitted by Mr. Burke in this speech, viz., the manner 
in which the Continent received this royal assurance. The assembly of 
Virginia, in their address in answer to Lord Botetourt's speech, express 
themselves thus : ' We will not suffer our present hopes, arising from 
the pleasing prospect your Lordship hath so kindly opened and dis- 
played to us, to be dashed by the bitter reflection that any future admin- 
istration will entertain a wish to depart from that plan, which affords 
the surest and most permanent foundation of public tranquillity and 



74 



NOTES 



happiness. No, my Lord, we are sure our most gracious sovereign^ 
under whatever changes may happen in his confidential servants, will 
remain immutable in the ways of truth and justice, and that he is 
incapable of deceiving his faithful subjects ; and we esteem your Lord- 
ship's information not only as warranted, but even sanctified by the 
royal word! " (Note to Dodsley's second edition.) 
19 ^l the noble lord upon the floor: Lord North. 

19 33 the exception of two only: Lord Hillsborough had been suc- 
ceeded by the Earl of Dartmouth, and Viscount Weymouth by the Earl 
of Rochford. 

20 22 that session of idle terror : from November 8, 1768, to May 9, 
1769. "Discontents arose in England to a greater height than in any 
preceding period of the reign. Although the conduct of administration 
respecting America had its share in exciting dissatisfaction, yet the chief 
cause was the proceedings against Mr. Wilkes." (Bisset, I, 251.) 

21 G this letter of attorney: "A letter or power of attorney gives to 
one man legal power to act as the representative of another, burke 
means that Lord Hillsborough's letter authorizes him to say what the 
opinions of the ministry are." (Selby.) 

21 21 atlas-ordinary, etc. : papers of different qualities and sizes. 
" Burke emphasizes the triviality of the object by describing it by names 
which are unknown to any but experts in a particular trade." (Selby.) 

22 10 disorderly to refer to it : References to previous debates are out 
of order in the House of Commons. 

22 24 his particular office: Lord North was Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. 

24 27 the end of every visto : The more correct spelling is vista. 

24 27 Your commerce .... to this repeal : " If any man has been 
accustomed to regard Mr. Burke as more of a rhetorician than a 
reasoner, let him turn back and study over the series of arguments 
contained in this first head [pp. 3-24]. There is nothing in any of the 
speeches of Mr. Fox or Mr. Pitt which surpasses it for close reasoning 
on the facts of the case, or the binding force with which, at every step, 
the con( lusion is linked to the premises. It is unnecessary to speak of 
the pungency of its application, or the power with which he brings to 
beai upon Lord North the whole course of his measures respecting the 
colonies, as an argument for repealing this 'solitary duty on tea.'" 

(( rOOdrit h.) 

25 :\ a turnpike : in the old sense of a barrier. " Any gate by which 
the way is obstrui ted." (Johnson.) 



NOTES 75 

25 22 the Act of Navigation: "passed by Cromwell in 1651, with the 
design of taking the carrying trade out of the hands of the Dutch. It pro- 
hibited amongst other things the importation into England and her col- 
onies, by foreign vessels, of any commodities which were not the growth 
and manufacture of the countries to which these vessels belonged." 
(Payne.) 

26 2 twenty-nine acts of Parliament : chiefly additions to the Act of 
Navigation. In 1660 an act was passed requiring that all articles of 
colonial trade enumerated in official lists, which omitted none of any 
value to England, should be sold only in England, and shipped in ves- 
sels built in England, Ireland, or the colonies, and that the master and 
at least three-fourths of the crews of these vessels should be English- 
men. In 1732 the Sugar Act imposed a high duty on sugars imported 
into the colonies. In 1764 duties were imposed on sugar, indigo, coffee, 
wines, silks, and cloths. 

26 8 a parliamentary revenue : a revenue from taxes imposed by 
Parliament and paid into the treasury, to be used as Parliament might 
direct for the general expenses of government. 

26 21 acts of King Charles the Second : " This act, which was amended 
in the reign of Wm. Ill, imposed a tax upon English ships which car- 
ried from colony to colony the ' enumerated articles ' which, strictly 
speaking, ought to have been sold in England only. . . . England's 
object, of course, was to make profit out of those evasions of the Navi- 
gation Act which she could not altogether prevent." (Selby.) 

26 25 the 6th of George the Second : the Sugar Act of 1732. 

26 30 a compromise of all: New England, Rhode Island, New York, 
Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were opposed to it, because they would 
be compelled to pay more for their sugar, and would lose the export 
trade to the French, Danish, and Dutch sugar-producing colonies. 

-27 2 Governor Bernard : Sir Francis Bernard was appointed Governor 
of the colony of New Jersey in 1758, whence, after two years' successful 
rule, he was transferred to Massachuset's Bay. For some time he 
enjoyed the good -will of the colonists; but his misrepresentations of 
their designs led the ministry to enforce the Act of Navigation, and 
later the demand for revenue. He announced the repeal of the Stamp 
Act in a speech fitted completely to counteract the loyal sentiments 
awakened by the concession. He dissolved the colonial assembly for 
sending out a circular letter inviting cooperation among the colonies 
against the new duties on imports ; and at his request troops were sent 
to Boston. In 1769 he was recalled to England and made a baronet. 



7 6 



NOTES 



In 1774 he published fourteen letters, which he had written between 
1 763 and 1 768 to various statesmen in England, setting forth his views on 
the relation of the colonies to England. The reference is to Letter II : 
" This act has been a perpetual stumbling-block to the custom-house 
officers ; and it will be most agreeable to them to have it in any ways 
removed. The question seems to be, whether it should be an act of 
prohibition, or an act of revenue. It was originally, I believe, designed 
for the former; and if it should be thought advisable to continue it as 
such, it will want no more than to be fully executed. But if it is meant 
to be an act of revenue, the best means to make it most effectual, that 
is, to raise the greatest revenue by it, will be to lower the duties in such 
a proportion as will secure the entire collection of them, and encourage 
the importation of the goods on which they will be laid." 

27 28 attended the colonies from their infancy : " This is not strictly 
correct. On the contrary, the charters granted to the founders of the 
settlement in Virginia distinctly empower the colonists to carry on a 
direct intercourse with foreign states. Nor were they slow to avail 
themselves of this permission ; for they had, as early as 1620, estab- 
lished tobacco warehouses in Middelburg and Flushing. The Naviga- 
tion Acts of Cromwell and of Charles II founded the monopoly system." 
(Payne.) 

27 29 grew with their growth, and strengthened with their strength : 
Pope, Essay on Man, ii, 136. 

28 1 Their monopolist: a figurative expression for Great Britain. 

28 14 not so much sent as thrown out: Religious persecution in Eng- 
land led the Puritans to establish Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Con- 
necticut; the Catholics, Maryland; and the Quakers, Pennsylvania. 

28 20 sole disposal of her own internal government: "The colony 
assemblies had not only the legislative, but a part of the executive 
power. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, they elected the governor. 
In the other colonies, they appointed the revenue officers who collected 
the taxes imposed by those respective assemblies, to whom those offi- 
< ers were immediately responsible. There is more equality, therefore, 
among the English colonists, than among the inhabitants of the mother- 
country.— Wealth of Nations^ IV, 7." (Payne.) 

29 3 the Act of Navigation neither is, or ever was, obeyed : Contrary 
to the act, the colonists traded directly with the Spanish colonies, 
sending out British manufactures and receiving gold bullion. Smug- 
gling was also very prevalent. A governor of Massachusetts said: 
" There is little left for the merchants residing in England to import 



NOTES 77 

into any of the plantations, those of New England being able to afford 
their goods much cheaper than such who pay the customs and are 
laden in England." About nine tenths of the tea consumed in New 
England was smuggled. The collectors of customs were easily bribed 
to connive at smugglers, and the colonists did not consider it a breach 
of morality to evade the law. In June, 1768, John Hancock's sloop 
Liberty was seized, because the master had made a false entry of the 
cargo. 

29 14 immense duties on French brandy : ten shillings a gallon. 

29 16 Pentland Frith to the Isle of Wight: Pentland Frith is an arm 
of the sea that bounds Scotland on the north, and the Isle of Wight is 
a small island south of England in the English Channel. 

30 10 At that period the necessity was established: At the close of 
the French and Indian War, after the colonies had been freed from 
foreign danger by the acquisition of Canada, the " King's friends " 
determined to abolish the charters of the colonies and to make them 
all royal governments. This arbitrary policy required a standing army 
maintained by the colonists, supposedly to protect the frontier, but in 
reality to oppress them. In 1763 a proposal was made by the Secretary 
of War to send twenty regiments of ten thousand men to America, to 
be paid by England for the first year, and afterwards by the colonists. 
The colonels, appointed by the King, would assist in carrying out his 
wishes in the House of Commons. 

30 20 the great resisters of a standing armed force : " The cry against 
standing armies and corrupt expenditure was a watchword of the coun- 
try party in the early part of the century," because on them as land- 
owners fell the burden of increased taxation. 

30 25 Mr. Townshend : Charles Townshend (1725-1767) was a very 
popular statesman. He entered Parliament in 1747 ; he was appointed 
Lord of the Admiralty in 1754, member of Privy Council in 1757, Sec- 
retary of War in 1761, President of Board of Trade in 1763, Paymaster 
General in 1765, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1766. For his 
character, see note on 55 14. 

30 30 upon a person: George Grenville (1712-1770) entered Parlia- 
ment in 1 741, and rose rapidly until he became Secretary of State in 1762. 
One year later he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he 
was dismissed in 1765 for not carrying out the King's wishes. He was 
unsuccessful in his attempt to prevent the Rockingham ministry from 
repealing the Stamp Act. "Mr. Grenville, though not a man of first-rate 
abilities, was a distinguished financier. His whole policy was directed 



;S NOTKS 

to making the most of the revenue, and especially to do this by repress- 
ing smuggling both in England and the colonies. He was also a rigid 
economist, and made good bargains for the public with capitalists. . . . 
In 1 764, after the termination of a costly war of seven years, he was able 
to bring forward a budget which proposed no additional taxes." (Payne.) 

31 2 in lights that were rather too detached: Many of Burke's illus- 
trations are taken from the art of painting. He was an intimate friend 
of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the patron of James Barry. See p. xiii 
and 31 32, 41 7, 55 26, 60 2. 

31 :i an American revenue was imposed upon him: George III forced 
Grenville to adopt the plan of deriving revenue from the colonies. 

31 33 He was bred to the law: "This admirable sketch has one pecul- 
iarity which is highly characteristic of Mr. Burke. It does not so much 
describe the objective qualities of the man, as the formative principles 
of his character. The traits mentioned were caitses of his being what 
he was, and doing w T hat he did. They account (and for this reason 
they are brought forward) for the course he took in respect to America. 
The same, also, is true respecting the sketch of Charles Townshend 
which follows, and, to some extent, respecting the sketch of Lord 
Chatham. This is one of the thousand exhibitions of the philosophical 
tendencies of Mr. Burke's mind, his absorption in the idea of cause 
and effect, of the action and reaction of principles and feelings." 
(Goodrich.) 

33 1 After the war, and in the last years of it : " The enforcement of 
the Navigation Act had preceded the Stamp Act. The important 
trade in British manufactures which the English colonists carried on 
with those of France and Spain, was certainly against the letter of the 
Navigation Act, though not, perhaps, against its spirit. This trade was 
afterwards allowed, though under duties that were virtually prohibitory." 
(Payne.) 

33 •_>:, my Lord Bute: The Earl of Bute (1713-1792), a Scotchman, 
practically controlled the government from 1760 to 1763, when his 
unpopularity forced the King to accept his resignation, and to appoint 
Grenville as Prime Minister, whom Bute hoped to control. During his 
period <>f power Bute had succeeded in securing peace with France and 
in breaking up the Whig oligarchy. To him Dr. Samuel Johnson owed 
his pension <>f .£300 a year. 

33 3] America was on the point of having no trade: In 1764, when 

lavigation Act was rigidly enforced, Governor Bernard wrote: 

"III' merchants say, There is an end of the trade of this province; 



NOTES 79 

that it is sacrificed to the West Indian planters ; that it is time for 
every prudent man to get out of debt with Great Britain as fast as he 
can, and betake himself to husbandry, and be content with such coarse 
manufactures as this country will produce." (Letter III.) 

34 4 appointment of courts of admiralty : The men accused of dis- 
obeying the Act of Navigation were tried by courts of admiralty and 
thus deprived of trial by jury. "This injudicious proceeding touched 
the sensibilities of the colonists perhaps more keenly than anything 
else." (Payne.) 

34 6 sudden extinction of the paper currencies : " The colonial assem- 
blies during the war had issued notes, which were made a legal tender. 
To remedy the inconvenience produced by their natural depreciation, 
Mr. Grenville passed an act which took away from them the nature of 
a legal tender. Most of the bullion of the colonies being employed in 
the trade to England, the extinction of the paper currencies must have 
caused a general stoppage in trade." (Payne.) 

34 jo their recent services in the war: "The colonies had entered 
warmly into the war against France ; and such was their zeal, that of 
their own accord they advanced for carrying it on, much larger sums 
than were allotted as their quota by the British government." (Good- 
rich.) In the war the colonies lost 30,000 men and incurred a public 
debt of $16,000,000. 

34 16 the 15th act of the fourth of George III : the act of 1763, impos- 
ing duties on sugars, wines, cloths, etc. 

35 5 a beginning of sorrows: Matthew xxiv. 8. Burke very often 
quotes from the Bible. See 17 32, 19 30, 44 3, 45 7, 45 10, 49 5, 54 21, 
57 25, 62 10, 62 29, 63 9, 64 11. 

35 17 Great was the applause of this measure : On September 24, 1775, 
the Marquis of Rockingham wrote to Burke : " The violent measures 
towards America are fairly adopted and countenanced by a majority of 
individuals of all ranks, professions, or occupations, in this country." 

35 24 did not object to the principle : " It is far from being true that 
'the Americans did not object to the principle' of the act of 1764; 
nor is Mr. Burke correct in saying that they ' touched it very tenderly.' 
The first act of the British Parliament for the avowed purpose of rais- 
ing a revenue in America was passed April 5th, 1764. Within a month 
after the news reached Boston, the General Court of Massachusetts 
met, and on the 13th of June, 1764, addressed a letter to Mr. Mauduit, 
their agent in England, giving him spirited and decisive instructions on 
the subject. It seems he had misconstrued their silence respecting 



So NOTES 

another law, and had not, therefore, come forward in their behalf 
against the act. They say, 'No agent of the province has power to 
make concessions in any case without express orders ; and that the 
silence of the province should have been imputed to any cause, even 
to despair, rather than to have been construed into a tacit cession of 
their rights, or an acknowledgment of a right in Parliament to impose 
duties and taxes upon a people who are not represented in the House 
of Commons? A committee was also chosen with power to sit in the 
recess of the General Court, and directed to correspond with the other 
provinces on the subject, acquainting them with the instructions sent 
to Mr. Mauduit, and requesting the concurrence of the other provincial 
assemblies in resisting ' any impositions and taxes upon this and the 
other American provinces.' Accordingly, in November of the same 
year, the House of Burgesses in Virginia sent an address to the House 
of Lords and a remonstrance to the House of Commons on the same 
subject. Remonstrances were likewise sent from Massachusetts and 
New York to the Privy Council. James Otis also published during 
this year his pamphlet against the right of Parliament to tax the colo- 
nies while unrepresented in the House of Commons. This was printed 
in London in 1765, about the time when the Stamp Act was passed — 
See Holmes's American Annals, 2d ed., Vol. ii, pp. 1 25-1 26." (Goodrich.) 
35 25 It was not a direct attack: "Their opposition was not that 
direct calling in question of the power of Parliament to impose taxes 
which was forced from them by the Stamp Act." (Payne.) 

35 28 like those they had been accustomed to bear: "the duties on 
rum, sugar, and molasses, imported from the West Indies ; and on 
tobacco and indigo exported from the American continent to any of 
the other plantations." (Payne.) 

36 m the colony agents could have no general powers : The colony 
agents were bound to act on instructions received from their colonial 
assemblies. Their duties were to get concessions in trade regulations 
and boundary disputes, to checkmate all projects for laws or ordinances 
that would unfavorably affect their plantations, to represent their colo- 
nies at court, before the Privy Council, and before Parliament, to 
appear for them in trials with full legal power of attorney, and to act 
as fiscal agents for transmission of public moneys. 

Referring to this paragraph, Israel Mauduit, agent for Massachusetts, 
said that in the spring of 1764, at the end of the session of Parliament, 
the colony agents held a conference with Mr. Grenville, in which Mr. 
Grenville asserted his determination to make the colonies pay a portion 



NOTES 8l 

of the ^70,000 debt incurred by the French and Indian war in America, 
and that he judged this method of raising the money the easiest and 
most equitable. But Mr. Grenville continued: "I am not, however, set 
upon this tax. If the Americans dislike it, and prefer any other method 
of raising the money themselves, I shall be content. Write therefore 
to your several colonies ; and if they choose any other mode, I shall be 
satisfied, provided the money is raised." This offer was acknowledged 
by the Massachusetts assembly in a letter to Mauduit, dated Boston, 
June 14, 1764, as follows: "The actual laying the stamp duty, you say, 
is deferred till next year, Mr. Grenville being willing to give the prov- 
inces their option to raise that, or some equivalent tax ; desirous, as he 
was pleased to express himself, to consult the ease and quiet, and the 
good-will of the colonies. . . . The kind offer of suspending the stamp 
duty in the manner, and upon the condition, you mention, amounts to 
no more than this, that if the colonies will not tax themselves, as they 
may be directed, the Parliament will tax them." (Mass. Hist. Soc. 
Collections. First Series, Vol. IX, p. 268.) 

38 18 as well as my eyes could discern it : Burke was near-sighted. 
All caricatures of him exaggerate his large glasses. 

38 27 a situation of little rank: Burke became private secretary to 
Lord Rockingham in July, 1765. See p. xii. 

39 7 the Spanish trade : See note on 29 3. 

39 20 the late Mr. Yorke: Charles Yorke (1722-1770) entered Par- 
liament in 1747; four years later he was appointed counsel for the 
East India Company. In 1756 he became Solicitor General, and in 
1762, as Attorney General, he opposed general warrants and favored a 
liberal interpretation of the Navigation Act to permit the bullion trade 
of the American and Spanish colonies. His ambition was to become 
Lord Chancellor, but when the office was offered to him by the Grafton 
ministry, he declined it, and promised the Rockingham Whigs, with 
whom he had been associated, that he would not accept it. Neverthe- 
less, after several interviews with the King, he weakly broke his prom- 
ise and was appointed Lord Chancellor. This conflict between honor 
and ambition led to a nervous illness, and three days after his appoint- 
ment he died. 

41 5 the King's speech: On January 14, 1766, the King said to the 
House of Commons : " No time has been lost, on the first advice of 
these disturbances, to issue orders to the governors of my provinces, 
and to the commanders of my forces in America, for the exertion of 
all the powers of government in the suppression of riots and tumults, 



82 NOTES 

and in the effectual support of lawful authority. . . . Whatever remains 
to be d<>iH on this occasion I commit to your wisdom ; not doubting 
but your zeal for the honor of my crown, your attention to the just 
rights and authority of the British legislature, and your affection and 
concern for the welfare and prosperity of all my people, will guide you 
to such sound and prudent resolutions, as may tend at once to preserve 
those constitutional rights over the colonies, and to restore to them 
that harmony and tranquillity, which have lately been interrupted by 
riots and disorders of the most dangerous nature. ... If any altera- 
tions should be wanting in the commercial economy of the plantations, 
which may tend to enlarge and secure the mutual and beneficial inter- 
course of my kingdoms and colonies, they will deserve your most seri- 
ous consideration. In effectuating purposes so worthy of your wisdom 
and public spirit, you may depend upon my most hearty concurrence 
and support." 

41 13 The Parliament sat to fill the vacancies: Whenever vacancies 
occur in the House of Commons through the death of members, their 
elevation to the peerage, their acceptance of office under the crown, 
their bankruptcy or lunacy, the Speaker is ordered by the House to 
authorize new elections. 

41 22 the Gordian knot : " In Greek legend, a knot tied by Gordius in 
the cord that connected the pole and the yoke of the ox-cart in which he 
was riding when he or his son Midas was chosen king of Phrygia. It 
was so intricate as to defy all attempts to untie it ; and the oracle 
of the temple in which the cart was preserved declared that whoever 
should succeed in undoing it would become master of Asia. Alex- 
ander of Macedon solved the difficulty by cutting the knot with his 
sword, and the oracle was fulfilled. Hence the phrase is applied to any 
inextricable difficulty ; and to cut tlie Gordian knot, or the knot is to 
overcome a difficulty in a bold, trenchant, or violent way." (Century 
Dictionary.) 

41 2'.) It opened the eyes of several : "Burke himself probably knew 

more about America than any one in England. He had read every 

Ible authority on the subject at the commencement of the Seven 

Years' War, when the attention of the public was strongly drawn to it, 

for his Account of the European Settlements in America (1757), which 

n recognized from the first as a standard authority." (Payne.) 

41 :):i my honorable friend under me: William Dowdeswell (1721 — 
1775) was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Rockingham ; like Burke, 
he refused to remain in office under Pitt. He forced his successor, Charles 



NOTES 83 

Townshend, to reduce the land tax from four to three shillings. Burke 
wrote the following epitaph on Dowdeswell, which he said was so true 
" that every word of it may be deposed upon oath " : " To the memory 
of William Dowdeswell, representative in Parliament for the county of 
Worcester, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the years 1765 and '66, and 
a member of the King's Privy Council : a senator for twenty years, a 
minister for one, a virtuous citizen for his whole life. A man of unshaken 
constancy, inflexible integrity, unremitted industry. His mind was gen- 
erous, open, sincere. His manners plain, simple, and noble; rejecting 
all sorts of duplicity and disguise, as useless to his designs and odious 
to his nature. His understanding was comprehensive, steady, vigorous, 
made for the practical business of the state. In debate he was clear, 
natural, and convincing. His knowledge, in all things which concerned 
his duty, profound. He understood beyond any man of his time the 
revenues of his country, which he preferred to everything except its 
liberties. He was perfect master of the law of Parliament, and attached 
to its privileges until they were set up against the rights of the people. 
All the proceedings which have weakened government, endangered 
freedom, and distracted the British empire, were by him strenuously 
opposed. And his last efforts under which his health sunk were to pre- 
serve his country from a civil war ; which being unable to prevent, he 
had not the misfortune to see. He was not more respectable on the 
public scene than amiable in private life. Immersed in the greatest 
affairs, he never lost the ancient, native, genuine English character of a 
country gentleman, disdaining and neglecting no office in life. He was 
a useful municipal magistrate ; with great care and clear judgment 
administering justice, maintaining the police, relieving the distresses, 
and regulating the manners of the people in his neighborhood. A 
husband and father, the kindest, gentlest, most indulgent. He was 
everything to his family except what he gave up to his country." 

42 1 a right honorable gentleman: General Conway (1721-1795) 
entered Parliament in 1741. As Secretary of State under Rockingham 
he moved the repeal of the Stamp Act. He continued in office under 
Chatham in order to keep the leadership of the House ; he was sup- 
posed to be the connecting link between the Rockingham Whigs and 
Chatham. 

42 5 the inquiry lasted in the committee : See note 4 12. 

42 9 old mercenary Swiss of state: The Swiss mercenaries were 
highly valued throughout western Europe, The allusion is to the 
" King's friends." 



84 NOTES 

42 27 that glaring and dazzling influence: The King and his court. 
Burke is referring also to the famous " eagle eye" of Lord Chatham. 

43 l Lord Chatham: William Pitt, first Earl of Chatham (1708-177S) 
was Paymaster General from 1746 to 1755. Greatly to his honor, and 
unlike his predecessors, he declined to accept a farthing beyond the 
salary from his new office. He refused either to appropriate to himself 
the interest of the huge balances in his hands, or to accept the com- 
mission of one half per cent. w 7 hich foreign powers had been accus- 
tomed to pay on receipt of their subsidies. By this disinterested conduct 
he secured a large share of public confidence. From 1756 to 1761 he 
was Secretary of State, with supreme direction of the French war and 
of foreign affairs. " His conduct of the war led to the culminating 
point of English power in the eighteenth century, and made England 
as much an object of jealousy and dread to all Europe as Spain and 
France had been formerly. . . . His power over the House of Commons 
was complete. Divisions on party questions were unknown, and sup- 
plies were voted without discussion. ... In him the people for the first 
time felt their power. He was essentially their representative, and he 
gloried in it." Burke was a pallbearer at his funeral. 

43 7 the honorable gentleman under the gallery: General Conway. 

43 8 the American committee : the committee of the whole House 
to consider the American affairs. 

43 15 of a complexion: constantly used by Burke in this sense of 
temperament or disposition. The same use appears in Chaucer and 
Shakespeare. 

43 21 Lord Egmont : The Earl of Egmont (1711-1770) was appointed 
Paymaster General in 1762, and First Lord of the Admiralty in 1763. 
It is strange that Burke should have made this complimentary reference 
to Egmont, because Egmont was said to have been one of the agents 
in the secret negotiations that led to the destruction of the Rockingham 
ministry. Perhaps Burke was pleased by Egmont's resignation in 1766 
from the unstable ministry of Chatham. Egmont is also said to have 
anticipated Burke's general reasoning on politics. 

43 27 The household troops : the " King's friends." See p. xxiii. 

44 3 Earth below shook : Psalms lxviii. 8. 

44 13 the honorable gentleman who led us : General Conway. 

44 27 the honorable gentleman who made the motion : General Conway. 

45 7 Hope elevated and joy brightened his crest : See Paradise Lost, 
IX, 633. 

45 10 the face of an angel: Acts vi. 15. 



NOTES 85 

45 12 all that kings in their profusion could bestow : " General Con- 
way must have felt this passage keenly, and he deserved it. He was 
now connected with Lord North, and had gratified the King by going 
the whole length of the most violent measures against Wilkes. About 
three weeks before, he had said respecting the Boston Port Bill, that 
he ' was particularly happy in the mode of punishment adopted in it.' 
He was then enjoying his reward in the emoluments pertaining to the 
office of Governor of Jersey, to which he had been promoted after 
holding for some years that of Lieutenant General of the Ordnance. 
In justice to Conway, it ought, however, to be said, that notwithstand- 
ing his hasty remark in favor of the Boston Port Bill, he was always 
opposed to American taxation. He differed from Lord North at every 
step as to carrying on the war, and made the motion for ending it, 
February 27th, 1782, which drove Lord North from power." (Goodrich.) 

49 4 a Dr. Tucker: Josiah Tucker (171 2-1 799) became Dean of 
Gloucester in 1758. He published a number of valuable economic 
pamphlets and was said to be " the only man of. that day who antici- 
pated the judgment and experience of our own on the question of the 
American colonies." He maintained in various energetic pamphlets that 
a separation from the colonies was desirable; that the supposed advan- 
tage of a colonial trade to the mother country was a delusion; and that 
the colonies turned adrift would fall out with each other, and be glad 
to return to political union. In Tracts on Political and Commercial 
Subjects (1774), p. 180, he said: "When the duty on stamps was first 
proposed, the Americans made as little objection to it, as could be sup- 
posed to be made to any new tax whatever. . . . But when the Outs 
and Pouters on this side the water, saw the advantage which the minister 
gave them by a whole year's delay, they eagerly seized the opportunity ; 
emissaries and agents were dispatched into all quarters ; — the news- 
papers were filled with invectives against the new-intended tax. It was 
injudicious ! — it was ill-timed ! — oppressive ! — tyrannical ! — and every- 
thing that was bad ! Letters upon letters were wrote to America to 
excite the people to associate, to remonstrate, and even to revolt. . . . 
Having been taught by these preceptors to feel their own weight 
and independence, they (the Americans) were not to be wheedled by 
soothing and cajoling letters to give over their enterprise, or to become 
a tractable, obedient people for the future." One year earlier he had 
written to a member of the ministry: "As to any views of prefer- 
ment, though I humbly thank your Lordship for your kind intentions, 
I have none at all ; being quite contented with my station. ... I have 



86 NOTES 

dedicated my time and talents to the service of my country, yet, as is 
well known, without neglecting the proper duties of my profession, and 
that too without fee or reward." 

49 5 his earnest labors in this vineyard : Matthew xx. 1-16. 

50 <J the Earl of Halifax : The Earl of Halifax (1716-1771) was 
President of the Board of Trade from 1748 to 1761, and under his direc- 
tion the commerce of America was so much extended that he was 
sometimes styled " the Father of the colonies." He was Lord Lieuten- 
ant of Ireland from 1761 to 1763, First Lord of Admiralty in 1762, and 
as Secretary of State from 1762 to 1765 ordered the arrest of Wilkes. 
His nephew, Lord North, made him Lord Privy Seal in 1770 and Sec- 
retary of State in 1 77 1 . Through this minister Burke had obtained the 
Irish pension of ^"300 in the days of his attachment to Hamilton, and 
for this reason he probably refrained from criticising him. 

50 14 Governor Fauquier: Lieutenant Governor of Virginia from 
1758 to 1768. He dissolved the Virginian House of Burgesses in 1765 
for passing Patrick Henry's resolutions. 

50 24 several strong public resolves : the resolutions of Patrick Henry, 
in which all the rights of British-born subjects were claimed for the 
Virginians. They denied the existence of any authority anywhere, 
except in the provincial assembly, to impose taxes, and denounced 
the attempt to vest that authority elsewhere, as inconsistent with the 
ancient constitution, and subversive of liberty in Great Britain as well 
as in America. 

51 27 no small acrimony: In 1769 the General Assembly had peti- 
tioned the King to recall Bernard for illegal interference in their rights 
and privileges. 

52 13 They obeyed the requisition : They would have welcomed a 
recommendation for such compensation, but declined to grant it when 
ordered. Upon the second demand the compensation was granted, but 
with a provision for complete indemnity and oblivion respecting the 
authors of the riot. This condition gave great offense to the British 
administration. 

52 20 demonstrated their gratitude: South Carolina voted a statue 
to Pitt and Virginia one to the King. 

53 7 Clarum et venerabile : "A name illustrious and revered by nations, 
and rich in blessings for our country's good." (Lucan's Pharsalia, IX, 
v, 202.) Cato is speaking of Pompey. 

54 !t pigging together: lying huddled together, like pigs. "One of 
the vulgarisms which too often disfigure Burke's pages." 



notes Sy 

54 9 heads and points, in the same truckle-bed : This is supposed to 
allude to Lord North and George Cooke, who were made joint Pay- 
masters. "As a handful of pins shaken together will be found to 
have heads and points confused, so two persons get more space in a 
narrow bed by lying opposite ways. The truckle-bed was a bed that 
runs on wheels under a higher bed." (Payne.) 

54 21 When his face was hid but for a moment: Isaiah liv. 8. Pitt's 
face was hid for three years. 

55 14 I speak of Charles Townshend : Horace Walpole has more justly 
said : " He (Townshend) had almost every great talent, and every little 
quality. His vanity exceeded even his abilities, and his suspicions 
seemed to make him doubt whether he had any. With such a capacity 
he must have been the greatest man of this age, and perhaps inferior 
to no man in any age, had his faults been only in a moderate proportion 
— in short, if he had had but common truth, common sincerity, common 
honesty, common modesty, common steadiness, common courage, and 
common sense." {Memoirs of George III, III, 72.) 

55 17 the delight and ornament of this House : " It was Garrick writing 
and acting extempore scenes of Congreve." (Walpole.) 

55 31 between wind and water : that part of a ship's side or bottom 
which is frequently brought above the water by the rolling of the vessel 
or by fluctuation of the water's surface. A hole made by shot in such 
a spot is very dangerous. 

57 16 an advocate for the Stamp Act: Townshend spoke in support 
of the bill and referred to the pretended gratitude of the Americans, 
whom he styled " children planted by our care, and nourished by our 
indulgence." Colonel Barre retorted: "They planted by your care! 
No ! your oppressions planted them in America. They fled from your 
tyranny to a then uncultivated, inhospitable wilderness, exposed to all 
the hardships to which human nature is liable. They nourished by your 
indulgence ! . . . No ; they grew by your neglect of them." 

57 25 as the fashion of this world passeth away: 1 Corinthians 
vii. 31. 

57 30 Instantly he was tied down : " During the winter of 1 766-1 767, 
Mr. Townshend was continually goaded by Mr. Grenville on the sub- 
ject of American taxation. ' You are cowards ! You are afraid of the 
Americans. You dare not tax America ! ' The rash spirit of Townshend 
was roused by these attacks. ' Fear ? ' s?id he. ' Cowards ? Dare not 
tax America? / dare tax America!'' Grenville stood silent for a 
moment, and then said, ' Dare you ta:: America ? I wish to God you 



88 NOTES 

would do it.' Townshend replied, ' I will, I will.' This hasty declaration 
could not be evaded or withdrawn." (Goodrich.) 

60 4 on a former occasion I tried your temper : in moving his eight 
resolutions relating to the disorders in North America. See p. xix. 

60 12 A Secretary of State has disclaimed : See 17 13-30. 

62 5 the penal bills : See p. xx. 

62 10 a destroying angel : i Chronicles xxi. 12. 

62 29 Seek peace and ensue it : Psalms xxxiv. 14. 

63 9 not used to do so from the beginning : Matthew xix. 8. 

64 l A noble lord: Lord Carmarthen, afterwards Duke of Leeds 
(1751-1799), entered Parliament in March, 1774. Although he usually 
voted with the ministry, he was in favor of receiving the petition of 
Massachusetts. After holding various court offices, he began in 17S0 
vigorously to oppose Lord North. In 1783 he was appointed ambassa- 
dor to Paris and later Secretary of State under Pitt. He endeavored to 
form an alliance with Russia and Austria against France. " He was an 
amiable nobleman of moderate abilities and capricious disposition, but 
his vanity was excessive and his political conduct unstable." 

64 11 when children ask for bread: Matthew vii. 9. 

66 9 the case of Pennsylvania: In 1758 a grant of ^"100,000 was 
delayed because the assembly asserted that it must be raised by taxing 
the lands both of private citizens and of the proprietors. The pro- 
prietors claimed that their property was exempt from local taxation. 

66 31 Sir William Temple: Sir William Temple (162S-1699) was 
ambassador to the United Provinces in the reign of Charles II. His 
Letters, Memoirs, and Essays were valued highly by Burke's contempo- 
raries as a model for literary style. Jonathan Swift later became his 
private secretary. 

67 21 not partial good, but universal evil: See Pope, Essay on Man, 
1. 293. 

68 5 The noble lord: Lord North. 

68 15 My excellent and honorable friend: Mr. Dowdeswell. 



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